This father thanked his ex-wife and her husband from the microphone, and the room was still laughing when he did it.
Emily was six the first time she explained our family to a stranger. A waitress asked where her mom was, and she said, She's at her house, and Dad's at his, and I'm at both, and I have two toothbrushes.
My daughter has spent twenty nine years making two households feel like one room, and she has never once sent either of us an invoice. At twelve she held two birthday parties on one Saturday, with a cake in each house and a drive between, and nobody ever worked out how she managed the candles.
The night before her high school graduation she called her mother and me separately and gave us the same instructions. Dinner was at seven thirty at the Greek place on Fulton. Her mom was coming, and Paul was coming, and I was coming, and if any of us made a face she would know. She said the Greek place had the good fries, which was her way of saying nobody was allowed to be late. Then she hung up on both of us.
I got there early because I was nervous. Susan and Paul were already in the booth. We had never sat at a table together for longer than a handoff at the curb. For about four minutes nobody said anything. Then Paul's phone gave us directions to a restaurant we were already in, and Susan started to laugh, and so did I, and by the time Emily came out of the kitchen, where it turns out she had been talking the owner into free baklava, the three of us had been laughing for twenty minutes about a GPS.
She sat down, looked at the three of us, and said, okay, that was easier than I thought. And she ate my baklava.
Dan, you'll hear a lot of advice about marriage tonight, and most of it will come from people who have done it once. I've done it once and a half. Here's the part I'm sure of. Emily does the hard diplomatic work in a room and doesn't tell anyone she's doing it. One day she's going to be tired. Notice, and bring the baklava.
Susan, thank you for raising her. Paul, thank you for being at every recital, including the ones I couldn't make. I'm grateful to both of you, and I'm saying it into a microphone so you can't pretend you didn't hear.
I hope that for the next fifty years Emily is only ever invited to one table, and that you two are the reason it is a big one, with an extra chair for anyone who shows up late, including me. So if you'll all raise a glass. To Emily and Dan.
End of speech. The Vault holds 3 more father of the bride speeches, named below.
