The Best Man Toast
The is the written version of the Best Man toast I gave at my friend Aaron's wedding in September of 2006. Keep in mind the speech was done from memory, so whether or not it actually came out this way will to stay a mystery until I see a video of it or something. But I think it came out mostly as written (I've made notes on a couple of changes that happened). Thought I'd put this up here as well, as it'll probably be my only example of speechwriting. And a good memory as well. Congrats again, Aaron and Jeni.
I first met Aaron Storck when he was a crazy, wild, brash, carousing, loud, obnoxious hooligan. Which I know makes it sound like we just met in the parking lot before the ceremony, but in actuality, we met back in the late 1980s, back when Miami Vice was still on the air, a show that Aaron considered to be religious programming.
We met through a mutual friend and got along great immediately. We had similar interests, we were both college guys… We didn’t necessarily agree on music. I was more of a Motley Crue kind of guy back then, he had more of Morrissey thing going. But despite the fact that he had the musical tastes of a 16-year old girl, we became good friends.
After college he moved to New York, and I moved to Arizona, but somehow we both ended up living in Sacramento after a couple of years, and we ended up becoming roommates. And for some reason we just ended up staying roommates. For years. For so many years friends of ours started wondering if it would be the two of us up here getting toasted one day.
We got along great as roommates. We liked all the same TV shows, we both smoked cigars, both basketball fantatics, both complete slobs. There were certain Aaronisms you learned to live with. For example, his penchant for bell peppers and sour kraut. Yeah, our apartment smelled magical. Seriously, we used to just go ahead and smoke cigars in the apartment, ‘cause really, who was going to smell it over the kraut? (Insert last-minute true story from two days before). You know, I used to wonder where Aaron’s bell pepper obsession came from, but I was riding with his parents in a rental car on the way from the airport, and we passed a vegetable stand, and Jan looked out the window and said “(gasp!) Did you see the size of those bell peppers?!”
So we ended up moving from Sacramento to San Diego, and it was during this time that Aaron met a girl named Jeni. Aaron and Jeni met on the internet, which, thankfully, is in no way a cliché. I still don’t know the details of how they met or what they chatted about. Frankly, I don’t think I want to know… But whatever it was, it must have been good, because it continued on, and soon Aaron was talking more and more to me about this really cool chick he’d met online. Things started to progress, and pretty soon it was more than just friendship happening. Maybe it was the growing bond between them, maybe it was the things they shared, maybe it was something they saw in each other’s smiles—which at that point were represented on screen by a colon and a parenthesis...
Before long they finally met in person, and made trips back and forth between San Diego and Seattle, and the romance that began at 35-60 typed words per minute had become a wonderful reality. Not too long after, Aaron let me know that he was going to move to Seattle. He asked me if would move there with him, but as tempting as it was to be Aaron’s safety net, I had a sneaking suspicion he wouldn’t need one. So it was finally time for us to go our separate ways, and for Aaron to become the fourth roommate in a row…to ditch me…for a girl. And he wasn’t in Washington long before I got the call from him telling me he was going to be asking Jeni to marry him. I don’t want to spoil the ending or anything, but she said yes. And then everybody involved in the betting pool on when he and I were going to be tying the knot threw up their hands and kissed their money good-bye. I lost fifty bucks myself... I had Valentine’s Day, 2008.
And so here we are now, on this very special day, a day when two wonderful people, who started their love affair being attracted to each other’s spelling, grammar and punctuation, have finally come full circle and made their bond a bond for life.
Jeni, I wish you all the best of luck in the years to come. With the bell peppers. With the Twilight Zone marathons. (Last minute decision to ditch the “Honey, can you call me Sonny Crockett?” joke and improv): Does he still do that thing where he gets up out of a deep sleep at like two in the morning and stumbles to the kitchen and pops open and sucks down a whole Diet Pepsi and then goes right back to sleep? No? That always used to creep me out...
Aaron, I’m so thankful that you finally realized I wasn’t going to feel that way about you. I know you haven’t always had the best track record with long-term relationships. I seem to recall you once broke up with a girl because she ate your burrito from Del Taco? But I’ve always known that when you finally found the right girl, you’d make it for life. And I knew very early on that Jeni was that girl. You definitely made the right choice. I think everyone here is with me on that.
We all wish you two the best, and all the happiness and joy and surprises and wonders in the many years to come that you both so richly deserve.
Congratulations, and we love you.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll raise your glasses?
To Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Storck.