A Wedding Toast

Those of us blessed with being asked to be maids or matrons of honor are also plagued by the fact that at some point during the wedding reception you are going to have to speak into a microphone in front of a large number of people. For pretty much everyone on the face of the planet, this is terrifying. Thoughts about what one should say are difficult to formulate into coherent paragraphs, much less statements. And for us female folk, there is also the knowledge that at some point during your speech you are most likely going to start crying.

My dilemma was not so much that I was going to be speaking in front of nearly 300 people (Thank you, youth ministry job, for teaching me many lessons regarding speeches in front of large audiences with whom you are unfamiliar!) My dilemma was simply that I was at a loss for what to say that would translate well in a room where I only really know half the people. Also, there were some still hurt feelings on my part that were nagging at me from my own wedding when a speech intended to be humorous did not exactly come across as planned, which at first made me less than enthused to give my own speech. At least my prior knowledge gave me a good starting point.

From an internet search for tips on how to give a decent wedding toast, I formulated an outline from multiple sites that proved to be very helpful and would recommend to others:

1. Introduce yourself (Not everyone is going to know who you are, of course.)
2. Provide a funny story or memory about the bride, groom, or couple.
3. Give some thoughts about love and marriage.
4. Articulate a wish, blessing, or toast for the bride and groom.

As always, the key to good speech-giving is to keep it short and sweet, otherwise known as get to the point. The more one rambles, the more likely it is that something could go amiss. Also, while I had gone over a basic speech in my head numerous times in the weeks before the wedding, I knew how extremely important it was to write it down. The moment the speech begins is usually the moment when your brain goes blank, so it is handy to have some notes close at hand.

Unfortunately, I did not find the time to write my thoughts down until the morning of the wedding. While we sat in the hair salon, I scribbled and re-scribbled my speech. I would recommend completing this earlier, but as a first-year teacher at a school, I do not exactly have a lot of free time these days. I had the foresight to bring note cards along since I knew I would have some down time that morning. I did not have the foresight that writing my speech was going to involve tearing up, which wreaked havoc on the false eyelashes the makeup artist had just applied. Oops.

Mom and I are trying to get a snap closed on the back of my sister's dress.

When it came time for me to speak, I opened with telling guests if anyone wanted to make money, they should pull out cell phones, start timing, and take bets on how long it was going to take until I started crying. It did get a good laugh, which helped break the ice for me a bit, and it helped to make me not feel so nervous. It was a good start.

Now of course I did not follow the written script word for word, but going off-script does have its consequences. After introducing myself, I spoke about how I could go on about stories of all the shenanigans my sister and I participated in as children, like when we used Crayola markers on our eyelids to make it look as if we were wearing eye shadow. (Thank you, Barbie doll, for that inspiration.) I also briefly mentioned the time I pushed my sister off the bed [when we were jumping on it] and she cracked open her head. At the time we were quite young, and I thought she was going to die. Our older brother tried, unhelpfully, to console me and told me that everything would be okay because if Katie died we could just get a new sister. It was here I nearly lost composure, but I paused and asked who won the bet to give me time to stop crying. After I was ready to proceed, I explained how my sister always tells me I am a mother hen to her, so I was going to do just that that evening.

My written speech was as follows:

For those who do not know me, I am Katie's [older] sister Amanda, also known by Rosie just to confuse people. I can attest I am happy to be here on such a joyous occasion, and I would like to thank Mom and Dad, Carol and Paul for hosting today. It is always a delight to see the hard work of preparation and planning come to fruition.

Perhaps Katie and Chad have heard many jokes over the years about when were they going to get married, much to the consternation of my sister, but all things happen for a reason and in their own time. Katie and Chad, today is your time.

Not too long ago, Pope Francis was in the news for commenting about couples throwing plates at each other, which by all means if you feel the need to do, I highly encourage it. But the news stories forgot to mention the rest of his message. Pope Francis went on to say, "Love is stronger than the moments in which we argue, and I therefore always advise married couples never to let the day draw to an end without making peace. There is no need to call in the United Nation peacekeeper. A little gesture is enough: a caress, see you tomorrow, and tomorrow we start afresh. This is life, and we must face it in this way, with the courage of living it together. Marriage is beautiful."

Katie and Chad, while I cannot promise all of your days will be as blissful as today, I can promise you the Beatles were correct when they sang, "Love is all you need." But they did miss a few other important things for a good marriage. Since I'm a teacher, we're going to review a few important phrases every couple needs to know, so pay attention because there'll be a quiz later. Repeat after me:

Proszę. Bitte. Please.

Dziękuję. Danke schön. Thank you.

Przykro mi. Es tut mir leid. I'm sorry.

Keep those sayings in your marriage toolbox, and they'll fix almost anything.

Walt Whitman once wrote, "The strongest and sweetest songs yet remain to be sung." Katie and Chad may you find many sweet songs to sing together in the years ahead, and may God bless you as you begin this new adventure in life together. To Katie and Chad!

Lamentably, the brief crying incident made me extremely nervous whereas before I had felt rather composed. Because of this, I skipped over a few sentences here and there, and I was definitely shaking more the longer I spoke. I guess that is why they call it the jitters! Thankfully, I was collected enough to ad-lib a few additional things, like how Pope Francis had my back on my suggestion that the Beatles missed a few items or explaining I had to include Polish and German into the key phrases to repeat since our family comes from those traditions.

On the bright side, the only thing I really regret is that I forgot to tell the guests to raise their glasses for the toast. I remembered it at the very last, but it felt so anti-climatic to me. You are your own worst critic, though. So, advice I would give to any future speech giver is to jot notes down about when to prompt guests to raise their glasses, just in case.

My beautiful sister the bride and me at the wedding reception.

At the same time, it was great to see my sister and now brother-in-law full of such joy that evening. That should always be the focus of celebrating a marriage. I do not know what it is about weddings, but they certainly display the best of what humanity has to offer. The bride in particular is so radiant. In general, a smile is plastered across her face from dawn until well past dusk, and it makes her glow all the more. It was a gaiety to sit back and watch my sister because I do not think I have ever seen her as joyful or beautiful as she appeared on her wedding day.

Family Celebrations

My family is a large family, and I love that there are so many of us. It makes family gatherings quite entertaining because there are so many people to catch up with, and we all have such distinct personalities. We can easily fill a room, and the noise level, depending on the side of the family, can make it difficult to hear oneself think. I would not change any of this.

That being said, I found my family bridal shower to be awkward and intimidating, not because of who was in the room but because of how many were in the room. Counting aunts, cousins, and cousins-once-removed to invite to bridal showers easily adds up to about 75 people. While it is rare to have every one of these ladies able to be at an event like a family bridal shower, it is not uncommon to have about 30 to 40 able to attend. As someone who is uncomfortable in most social situations, I found being the center of all this attention rather nerve-wracking.

I am not sure if my sister felt the same way back in September when I threw her a bridal shower to celebrate her future nuptials with our family, but she seemed to have more composure than I did. For that, I was slightly jealous.

I have been to quite a few bridal showers in which guests have to play games centered around how well one knows the bride. In a family as large as ours, it can be quite impossible to know a cousin or niece as well as the questions of those games ask. So, I asked myself why not flip that concept around?

Thus, a bridal shower theme developed around favorite things. I tried to pick out my sister's favorite foods to serve to our guests. I included a recipe card with the invitations for guests to fill out a favorite recipe to share with my sister, and I encouraged them to consider including a spice listed in the recipe as part of their bridal shower gift. I should not have been surprised, but it was amazing to see such a big response to this gesture.

When it came time for a few games, we played Guess the Age of the Bride. This seemed like a game that would have an equal playing field, and it certainly proved challenging for many. I picked out ten photos of my sister from birth on up, numbered them randomly, and had the women attendees write down my sister's age next to the corresponding photo number on a worksheet. Considering my sister was asked what grade she was going into a few months before her wedding, not many people guessed very many of the ages correctly. It was highly entertaining.

We ran out of good table space, but this cart worked out well for staging the first game.

The best game by far, though, had to have been Last Purse Standing. The whole purpose of this game was to reward the woman who had the most junk stuffed into her purse. My mother and I complied a lengthy list thinking we might need it, but we only got to about the fifteenth item on our list. It was a fitting game in honor of my sister as she nearly gave me a huge welt one time when we were in high school after she had whacked me with her purse. When I screamed out in agony and asked her what she had in her purse, she pulled out a padlock, a golf ball, and quite a few other very random items. For the game, ladies had to produce the item and hold it up for everyone to see. I have never seen so many women digging through purses so frantically before. It was amusing for me to administer, and judging from the laughter and smiles from our family and friends, it was an exhilarating game for them.

I was able to snap one picture at the beginning of the game Last Purse Standing before my camera died.

In keeping with a favorite theme, I gave out prizes to the winners of the games we played. Each of these gift bags was filled with either some of my sister's current favorite things or something she really liked as a child. There was a gift bag full of bath items that included my sister's favorite body cleanser, Neutrogena grapefruit scented body wash. Another gift bag included Leinenkugel's Honey Weiss beer with honey roasted peanuts, the only kind of peanut she would ever eat as a child. A third gift bag was filled with some Minnesota Twins drink-ware items.

The most expensive gift bag contained the movie Gone With the Wind along with some of her favorite candies like Reese's Pieces and Skittles. The Reese's Pieces was a current favorite, but the Skittles had a fun story from when she was small and constantly running around school during our brothers' basketball games with the rainbow colored candy. One of the priests at the Catholic school we attended always asked if she would share some Skittles with him when he stopped in to watch the games. Sometimes she would say yes, and sometimes she would say no. Then one time when our family brought the gifts up to the altar during Sunday mass, this same priest said to my sister, "Gee, Katie, I thought you were going to bring me some Skittles." Needless to say, everyone got a good chuckle out of that.

However, the most entertaining bag had to have been the one filled with coffee and powdered sugar mini-donuts. My sister refused to eat any other kind of doughnut as a kid after Sunday mass on fellowship days. My parents have stories about how she would bring the doughnuts, wrapped in napkins, home with her, and she would get powdered sugar everywhere in the car. I remember sometimes finding half-eaten doughnuts nearly a week later, still wrapped in its napkin somewhere around the house.

When it came time to open her gifts, my sister was certainly blessed by some very generous family members. I am always amazed at how giving people can be in our family. That is probably what makes families so great. We share joys and sorrows with each other, and we are a support network. Whether it is starting a new family or beginning a new marriage, families can be the best kind of encouragement.