Maid of honor speech for a sister

Good evening. I’m Ruth, I’m Elena’s older sister, and I’ve been preparing this speech, on and off, since approximately 1997.

Elena arrived when I was four, and I have been told I was not initially delighted. I had, apparently, been very clear that I wanted a dog. What I got was a small furious person who took my things, wore my clothes without asking for eighteen consecutive years, and became — irritatingly — the best person I know.

Here is the thing about my sister. She has never once been talked out of something she believed was right. Not by me, not by our parents, not by any teacher who tried. At nine years old she refused to attend a birthday party because the girl had been unkind to someone else, and she would not be moved on it. She is still exactly that person. It is occasionally exhausting and it is entirely admirable.

Marcus, you should know that when she decides something about you, that’s it. There’s no appeal process. She decided about you very early, and she’s never wavered once, and I have watched her not waver for three years.

Elena, I have loved being your sister. I got to watch you become this from a very good seat.

Everyone, please raise your glasses — to Elena and Marcus.

Hi. I’m Jess, and Katie is my big sister, which means that for most of my life she has been about six months ahead of me on everything and has never once made me feel slow.

When you’re the younger one, you spend your childhood watching. I watched Katie handle school, and boys, and our parents splitting up, and a year when she was nineteen that was harder than she has ever admitted to anyone in this room. She handled all of it about four years before I had to, and then she was there with the instructions when my turn came.

I have never had to do anything first. That is the great luxury of being the younger sister, and I don’t think I’ve ever thanked her for it.

So: thank you. For going first. For coming back to tell me what it was like.

Sam — she will do the same for you, forever, and she will not mention it. Notice it anyway.

To Katie and Sam.

Evening, everyone. I’m Naomi, and Bethan is my sister — eleven years younger, which means I have essentially watched an entire person happen from the beginning.

I remember her being brought home. I remember being told I could hold her if I sat down and put a cushion under my arm. I remember thinking she was disappointingly inactive.

With a gap that size you don’t really fight. I was at university before she was at secondary school, so we skipped the part where sisters borrow each other’s things and stop speaking for a fortnight. What we got instead was stranger and better: I got to watch her become someone from a distance, and then meet her properly as an adult, and discover that she was funny in exactly the way I find funny and I’d had no idea.

Bethan, the best thing about the last few years is that you stopped being my little sister and started being my friend. I like you enormously. I’d have picked you.

Owen, she is the best of us. Look after her.

To Bethan and Owen.

I’m Maya, and Anya is my twin, so I am going to try very hard to get through this.

People ask what it’s like being a twin and there’s no good answer, because I have no comparison. I have never had a day without her. There is no memory I own by myself. Every single thing that has ever happened to me, she was somewhere in the building.

What I will say is that we are not the same, and everyone always expected us to be. Anya is the brave one. She is the one who speaks first in a room, who says the awkward thing that needed saying, who once told our headmaster he was being unfair and turned out to be right.

I have spent thirty-one years slightly in her wake and it has been the great privilege of my life.

Daniel — today is the first day of my sister’s life where somebody else comes first, and I want you to know I’m genuinely glad about it. I wouldn’t hand her over to just anyone. I’m handing her to you.

Anya. Half of me. To you and Daniel.

Good evening. I’m Chloe, I’m Tash’s sister, and I’d like to begin by thanking her for giving me a microphone, an audience, and twenty-six years of material. Bold choice.

My sister has always been dramatic. When she was six she fell over in the garden, was entirely unhurt, and lay on the grass for forty minutes because nobody had come with sufficient urgency. When she was fifteen she did not speak to me for nine days over a hairbrush. Not a hairbrush of hers. A hairbrush.

She is also — and this is the part that ruins the joke — the person everyone in this family rings when something has actually gone wrong. Every single one of us. She has never not answered.

When she met Adam, she rang me at eleven at night to tell me she’d met someone normal, and she sounded genuinely frightened by it.

Adam, you are the calmest thing that has ever happened to my sister, and this family regards you as a public utility.

Tash, I love you. You’re still not getting the hairbrush back.

Everyone — to Tash and Adam.

I’m Steph, and Nicola is my sister. I want to say something true, so bear with me for a second.

Nicola and I did not get on for a long time. Most of the people in this room know that. There were a few years where we managed Christmas and not much else, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise today, because pretending would make what I actually want to say worth less.

Here is what I want to say. Somewhere in the last four years my sister decided to keep trying, at a point when I’d more or less stopped. She kept ringing. She kept asking. She was the one who did the work, and she did it without ever once making me feel like I owed her for it.

I have my sister back because she was more stubborn about it than I was. That is the single best thing anyone has done for me.

Paul, she is worth the work. I’m the proof.

Nic — I’m so glad you’re here. To Nicola and Paul.

Hello. I’m Amber. Freya became my sister when I was twelve and neither of us was consulted about it.

For about a year we were two strangers being polite in a hallway. I want to be honest about that, because I think a lot of people assume these things are instant, and ours absolutely wasn’t.

What changed it was nothing dramatic. It was a Tuesday. We were both revising at the kitchen table and she made me a cup of tea without asking, and put it down in the right spot, and went back to her book. And I remember thinking: oh, we’re doing this, then.

Fifteen years later I don’t use the word “step”. I don’t think either of us has for a decade. She is my sister and there is no useful distinction left to make.

Freya, we got landed with each other, and it turned out to be the best thing that happened to either of us.

Louis, welcome to a family that collects people. To Freya and Louis.

I’m Hana, I’m Mei’s sister, and I’m going to keep this short because she knows all of it already.

Mei is the person I have wanted to be like since I was old enough to notice there were different ways of being. She is patient in a way I’m not. She assumes the best about people, and she is right about them far more often than I am.

Ryan, you have married the kindest person in our family, and that is a competitive field.

Mei, I love you. Everyone — to Mei and Ryan.