The Brother of the Bride Speech
The one that made me shed some manly tears.
My sister, Ivy, got married on January 27, 2013. And in honor of their first year anniversary as a married couple, I am posting the speech I made during their wedding. I would like to thank my Dad for giving me the opportunity to shed some tears in front of hundreds of strangers and Auntie Lory for reminding me how I made her cry during the wedding.
I am putting this out there because sooner or later the video might come out on YOUTUBE. And to remind everyone that brothers can be hard on the outside but have a soft, sweet center in the inside.
THE BROTHER OF THE BRIDE SPEECH
Good evening everyone,
I’m Kenneth, and I’m Ivy’s older brother. I am here to give my 1st ever “ brother of the bride’s speech” and I promised myself I wont cry so bear with me if I do shed some manly tears.
Let me start off by congratulating the newlyweds for tying the knot and on behalf of our family I would also like to thank everyone for being here and sharing this memorable life event with us. Thank you to the ninongs and ninangs and to our relatives who flew in from around the world for Ivy and Jeff.
Now for the hard part of my speech..
Allow me to share with you all, three personal and intimate stories of Ivy and our family. But before I start I would like to advise everyone that I have taken the creative license on this and so most of the things I’m about to share are probably true.
We are 6 in the family, our parents, myself, Ivy, our younger brother Kevin and the youngest Issa. We were born just a 1 year apart from each other except for Issa who was born 2 years after Kevin. When we were growing up, our parents would buy us toys for Christmas. And they would wrap them and place them under the Christmas tree. Every Christmas our parents would buy Ivy barbie dolls and every year Ivy would have the same reaction to it…she would tear the gift wrapper and without opening the box she would take a very curious look at it and then just leave it under the Christmas tree. Ivy would then run off and play with her brothers, playing with toy swords and guns, getting dirty from crawling on the floor and fighting off imaginary invasions. Our parents were worried that Ivy would grow up to be a tomboy…
And like any good parent would… Our parents just said “ Bahala na. We will love her still if she chooses to be a tomboy.”
It’s not that Ivy found guns and swords more interesting than barbies but she found happiness in the moment spending time with her siblings. And now that we have grown older we still enjoy spending time and traveling together and we hope that getting married and having our own families wont change that.
The next story is set in 2006, I got a promotion at work and was scheduled to go to China. At the same time, Dad got very ill and as the eldest I told myself that I should do the responsible thing and be the man of the house. But when I talked to our Mom to tell her my decision to stay, she said no. She told me that she will not let me waste opportunities like this and that my Dad would probably say the same thing. But one statement I still remember from that conversation with my mom was “Don’t worry, Ivy’s here.”
So i went off to China and became the man of the house a thousands of miles from home. I thank Ivy for being the “man of the house” here while I was away. Being responsible is one of the many attributes we appreciate about Ivy and I think Jeff is very lucky to have her in his life.
The last story that I would like to share with everyone are the times we were subjected to child labor by our parents. Growing up, we sold cookies and cakes during Christmas. My mom would have Ivy and Issa help out in the kitchen. She taught them how to bake, how to calculate costs. So while the girls were baking, I was in charge of food tasting…. Seriously though, our dad taught us marketing: how to package our baked goods and how to sell them. I am proud to say that we were raised by entreprenuerial parents. And most of the things that we apply in our carreers today we did not learn from school but from our parents. Ivy is now a very good cook and baker and another reason Jeff is a lucky man, while i am still a very good food taster.
Even in the context of baking cookies, our parents manage to teach us the value of critical thinking, the value of quality and inner strength. And Ivy has all those qualities and more. So Jeff you got married to a beautiful, responsible and very talented woman. Please take care of ivy. Or else………….
I have never been married but my advice to both of you is love one other, laugh together and always strive to be better for each other. On behalf of everyone in our family, we welcome you Jeff and we look forward to this new chapter in both of your lives. May it be filled with happiness and joy.
And with that I would like to invite everyone to raise their glass as we congratulate Ivy and Jeff.
-End-
