How to Survive Your Brother's Wedding

You're reading this three hours before the reception.

That's fine. That's completely fine. Take a breath. I've been where you are standing in a hotel bathroom, tie half knotted, wondering why you didn't write this speech during the six months you've had since your brother asked you. But we don't have time for self-reflection. We have work to do.

First, acknowledge what's happening. You have procrastinated. The wedding is beautiful, your brother is married, and in approximately one hundred and eighty minutes, two hundred people will be watching you hold a microphone. Some of them are crying already. They cry easily at weddings. Imagine how they'll cry when you have nothing to say.

Now, before we begin writing, we need to establish optimal working conditions. You cannot write a heartfelt speech in a chaotic environment. Notice the towel on the floor. Pick it up. Hang it properly. Not like that fold it in thirds first. The small embroidered flowers should face outward. There. Don't you feel calmer already?

While you're in the bathroom, examine your face in the mirror. You look tired. This is because you stayed up until two a.m. last night researching "famous best man speeches" and watching clips from Wedding Crashers. You learned nothing except that Vince Vaughn is taller than you thought. But that's behind us now.

Check your phone. Seventeen new messages in the wedding party group chat. Don't read them. Actually, read them. Your brother's college roommate just posted a photo of all the groomsmen except you with the caption "Squad!" You are missing from the squad because you told them you needed to "make a phone call." They don't know you're hiding in a bathroom, starting at your Notes app, where you've written "Speech" and nothing else.

Reply to the group chat: "Be right there!" Add a champagne emoji. This buys you four more minutes.

Now. Open your laptop. No, first you need your charger. Where is your charger? It's in your suitcase. Where is your suitcase? In your hotel room. Where is your hotel room? Down the hall. You need to go get it.

Walk down the hallway. Walk purposefully, like a man on important best man business. Pass the hotel's business center. Notice it's empty. Notice it has a printer. File this away you might need to print notecards later, assuming you write anything worth printing.

Reach your room. Unlock door. See your suitcase exploded across the bed like a crime scene. This happened this morning when you couldn't find your cufflinks. You still haven't found your cufflinks. You're not wearing cufflinks. No one has noticed.

Locate charger under the pants you rejected for being "too casual" for a wedding, even though they're suit pants and this concern made no sense. Return to bathroom with charger.

Plug in laptop. Wait for it to boot up. This takes ninety seconds but feels like your entire childhood passing before your eyes. Remember learning to ride a bike with your brother. Remember him teaching you to throw a football. Remember him covering for you when you broke Mom's vase. Oh god. You should mention the vase in your speech. Write that down.

Open new document. Type: "Daniel is my brother and my best friend. When we were kids, I broke Mom's vase and he"

Delete it. Too boring. Everyone starts with childhood stories. You need something original.

Research time. Open new browser tab: "how to write best man speech." Seventeen million results. Choose the first one: "The Ultimate Best Man Speech Guide." Read the introduction. They suggest starting with a joke. Okay. You need a joke.

Open another tab: "best man speech jokes." Skim through them. They're all terrible. "Marriage is like a deck of cards in the beginning all you need is two hearts and a diamond, but after a few years you wish you had a club and a spade." You cannot say this. Your brother's new wife's father is a retired Marine. He will kill you with his bare hands.

Close joke tab. Open new tab: "heartfelt best man speech examples." Read one. It's beautiful. The speaker talks about watching his brother become a man, about the moment he knew his brother had found "the one," about the sacred bond of marriage.

You feel inspired. You feel emotional. You begin typing: "I knew Daniel had found the one when"

When what? When did you know? Try to remember. There was that time Daniel called you at midnight, three months into dating Sarah, saying "I think this is it." But you were half-asleep and said "That's great, man" and went back to bed. That's not a speech. That's evidence you're a bad brother.

There was the time you all went to that restaurant and Sarah laughed at Daniel's terrible pun about calamari and you thought, "She gets him." Can you build a speech around calamari? Should you?

Stand up. Pace the bathroom. Three steps forward, turn, three steps back. You're thinking. This is the physical manifestation of thinking. Writers pace. You saw it in a movie once.

Catch your reflection pacing. Stop. Sit back down.

Check your phone. Twelve messages. The wedding photographer wants a photo of all the groomsmen. In five minutes. In the garden.

Reply: "Two minutes!" Add a thumbs up emoji. This is a lie. You need at least ten minutes. But maybe the garden will inspire you. Nature inspires people. Poets love nature.

Save your document. You've written one sentence. It's not a good sentence, but it exists.

Walk to garden. Arrive eight minutes late. Everyone is already posed on the decorative bridge. Your brother sees you and grins. He looks happy. He looks like he hasn't slept in days but in a good way, in the way of a man who just married the love of his life and partied until three a.m. at his own rehearsal dinner.

He waves you over. You take your place next to him. The photographer says "Big smiles!" and you all smile big. Your face hurts. You've been smiling big all day. Your face has forgotten how to do any other expression.

"Looking good, best man," Daniel says, adjusting your tie without asking. This is what he does. He takes care of things. He took care of you your entire childhood walking you to school when you were scared, helping with homework, talking you through your first breakup. And now you have to tell two hundred people why he's a good man when the real answer is too big for words.

"Speech ready?" asks Tyler, the college roommate, the one who posted "Squad!"

"Absolutely," you say. "It's going to be great."

"Can't wait," Tyler says. "I cried at my brother's wedding speech. Like, sobbed."

This is not helping.

Photos take twenty minutes. The photographer makes you do serious faces, laughing faces, candid walking faces that don't feel candid because you're all walking nowhere, just in a circle around the garden. Finally, she's satisfied.

You have one hour and forty minutes.

Return to bathroom. Your sanctuary. Your prison.

Read what you've written: "I knew Daniel had found the one when"

Think about Sarah. Really think about her. She's kind. She laughs at your jokes, even the bad ones. She brought soup when you had the flu last year, even though you weren't her family yet. She made Daniel better not because he wasn't good before, but because she made him want to be better.

You should say that. Type it: "Sarah makes Daniel want to be better."

Read it. Delete it. Too vague. What does that mean? Better at what? Better at Scrabble? He's already insufferable at Scrabble.

Try again: "Sarah makes Daniel kinder, funnier, more patient."

Is that true? You think about Daniel before Sarah. He was kind, funny, patient. But yes more so now. The way he looks at her. The way he listens when she talks about her day. The way he learned to cook because she loves cooking together.

The cooking. That's something. Type: "Daniel learned to cook for Sarah. My brother, who once set water on fire don't ask me how now makes risotto."

That's good. That's a detail. People love details.

You're on a roll. Keep going: "I've watched my brother become a man who"

Your phone buzzes. Text from your mother: "Where are you? We're taking family photos."

"On my way!" you write back.

You are not on your way. You are trapped in a bathroom with an unfinished speech and a growing sense of doom.

But you go. Family photos are nonnegotiable. You stand between your mother and your aunt Carol, who keeps asking if you're seeing anyone, why not, you're such a handsome boy, she knows a lovely girl from her book club.

"Not now, Aunt Carol," your mother whispers, but Aunt Carol doesn't understand whispers.

The photographer positions everyone. Your grandmother, age eighty-seven, sits in the center like a tiny, elegant queen. Your grandfather stands behind her, hand on her shoulder, the way he's stood behind her for sixty-three years. You think about them meeting in 1962, about your grandfather asking her to dance at some church social, about how they didn't know they were starting a whole family tree that would lead to this moment, to Daniel in his tuxedo, to you in your bathroom, speechless.

That's it. That's the speech.

Or part of it, anyway.

Photos end. You sprint to bathroom. Don't actually sprint you're in dress shoes and the hotel floor is slippery. Walk very quickly.

Type frantically: "Grandma and Grandpa met in 1962. They didn't know they were starting something that would lead to this day, to Daniel and Sarah. That's what marriage is it's choosing to start something without knowing where it goes, trusting that where it goes will be good because you're going there together."

Read it back. It's cheesy. It's very cheesy. But it's also true, and people cry at true things at weddings. You're counting on this.

Check time. One hour, ten minutes.

You need an opening. Speeches need openings. Start with something attention grabbing.

Type: "For those who don't know me, I'm the better looking brother."

Delete it. You look identical. You're twins. That's the whole thing about you and Daniel you're twins who everyone says are impossible to tell apart, even though you insist you look nothing alike. This could be part of the speech. The twin thing.

New opening: "Daniel and I are twins. Growing up, everyone asked if we could read each other's minds. We can't. If we could, Daniel would know that I forgot to write this speech until this morning."

Wait. That's honest. Too honest? People like honesty. But they also like best men who have their lives together.

Revise: "Daniel and I are twins. Growing up, everyone asked if we could read each other's minds. We can't. But I do know my brother. I know he's loyal, generous, and constitutionally incapable of leaving a movie theater without checking under the seats for lost items, items that are never his, but he checks anyway, because what if someone needs their phone charger?"

That's a real thing Daniel does. It's weird and it's perfect.

Keep writing. You're in a flow state now. The words are coming: "I know he's the kind of person who remembers your coffee order, who shows up when he says he will, who will help you move even when you have three flights of stairs and no elevator. I know all this because he's my brother, but also because he's my best friend."

Your hands are shaking. Not from nerves from typing too fast. From the three cups of coffee you had this morning. From the knowledge that you have fifty-eight minutes and you're actually doing this, you're actually writing the speech.

"And then he met Sarah."

This is the pivot. This is where the speech becomes about them, not just about Daniel.

"Sarah, you are patient you'd have to be, to date a man who color codes his bookshelf. You are brilliant you have a PhD, and you still laugh at Daniel's puns. You are everything my brother didn't know he needed until he met you."

Is this too much? You read it again. No. It's a wedding. Too much is the right amount.

"Daniel, I've watched you become even more yourself with Sarah. More confident, more joyful, more willing to try new things like karaoke, which we all wish you hadn't tried, but we appreciate the effort."

That's a joke. That's your one joke. Daniel is terrible at karaoke. Everyone knows this. It will land.

You're almost done. You can feel it. The ending is close.

"Marriage is choosing someone to build a life with. It's choosing them again and again, through the boring days and the hard days and the days that feel like too much. You two have chosen each other, and we're all here because we believe in that choice. We believe in you."

Okay. Now the toast part. This is traditional.

"So please raise your glasses to Daniel and Sarah. May your love be modern enough to survive the times, but old fashioned enough to last forever."

You didn't write that last line. You found it on a website forty-five minutes ago and saved it in your Notes app. But it's good. You're using it.

Read the whole speech from the beginning. It's 487 words. That's approximately three minutes. Perfect. Not too long, not too short. You time yourself reading it aloud. Two minutes, forty seconds. Add pauses for laughter and tears: three and a half minutes. Still perfect.

Check your phone. You have six text messages.

From the wedding coordinator: "Speeches begin in 30 minutes."

From your mother: "So proud of both my boys today ❤️"

From Tyler: "Bro I have my speech on notecards. Do you need notecards?"

From Daniel: "Thanks for being my best man. Love you."

That last one makes your eyes sting. Stop it. You cannot cry yet. You have to save it for the actual speech.

Print the speech. Walk to business center. Print it in size 16 font, double spaced. Print a backup copy. Print a third copy in case something happens to the first two copies. This is called being prepared. You are very prepared for someone who started three hours ago.

Return to bathroom one final time. Read through speech again, making small marks where you should pause, where you should make eye contact with Daniel, where you should gesture to Sarah.

Fold speeches. Put one in your jacket pocket. Put backup in your pants pocket. Leave third copy on bathroom counter, just in case you need to run back.

Look in mirror. Fix tie. Fix hair. Give yourself a stern look. You can do this. You procrastinated, yes, but you also wrote something real. Something true. Something that will make your brother happy, which is the only thing that matters.

Walk to reception hall. The room is golden with late afternoon light. Tables are set with white flowers. People are laughing, drinking champagne, eating tiny expensive appetizers. Your brother and Sarah are at the head table, holding hands, looking at each other like they're the only people in the room.

The coordinator touches your elbow. "Five minutes," she says.

"Ready," you tell her.

And the miracle is: you are.

You're ready because you spent six months not writing this speech, and three hours finally writing it, and now you have something that's honest and imperfect and completely from the heart. You have a speech about your brother who covers for you, who checks under movie theater seats, who married someone who makes him even more himself.

The coordinator hands you the microphone.

You stand.

Two hundred people stop talking and look at you.

You reach into your pocket and touch the folded paper.

And you begin.

"For those who don't know me, I'm the better-looking twin..."