Friend’s Wedding Speech — 2023

In 2023, my best and oldest friend got married. This is the speech I gave at the rehearsal dinner.

I don’t know Chris’s side of our story, or what he says about his weird Canadian friends.

But I’m going to tell you my version of the truth, the one that centers me.

Our friendship began on the forum for alpha testers of a piece of obscure writing software.

On the forum, we’d exchange film recommendations, movie scripts we’d written, ideas we’d had.

And Chris liked my writing.

It was the first time in my life that someone liked what I’d written. My family saw writing as a distraction—from school, church, from god knows what else.

And that made my world feel small, and my place in it.

Chris, my friend from upstate New York, made it feel bigger. And my place in it.

Chris was the first person who made me feel like a writer.

Jumping to 2007, Twitter (it used to be a popular social media app) was new—and we were obsessed with new media.

Chris was running this new media blog and asked if I would become its editor-in-chief.

It gave me a platform, a perspective, and skills.

It gave me relevance in a changing world.

In fact, it helped get me my first job at an advertising agency.

I don’t have a degree—a lot of people I grew up with didn’t have a chance.

And I didn’t understand then that Chris gave me my chance.

By believing in me my world got so much bigger.

Chris built his agencies, I built my career. And, eventually, we were meeting up in cities like London, Toronto, Halifax, New York. We felt like big shots, to some degree.

Where I’m from, visiting New York City is a luxury. But Chris—and his long-suffering roommates—would let me crash at their place when I’d get stranded from cancelled flights.

My world felt so big.

We even had this podcast, with real fans and a real meet-up in a real bar in the real New York—the one from TV.

And in writing this speech I realized that in so many of the ways I’m not the person my upbringing destined me to become—is because of Chris.

And then, in 2017, I get the text:

“In unrelated news, Elana and I are following each other on Twitter.”

I realize now what nobody did then—the world was getting bigger for them both.

In going through old texts from our friendship I can see Chris’ anxiety shift from wonder and stress about the present to excitement and dreams about the future with Elana.

From “Here’s what I’m doing” to “Here’s what I want.”

Sure, according to one text Elana’s wifi was a big problem, but love conquers all.

Eventually, he asked if we could hop on a FaceTime.

Now, Chris and I are text-first friends. It’s how we met and grew our friendship.

So I had my suspicions when he wanted to meet on video.

Either he had some new tech toy he needed to test out, or it was even bigger than that.

It was.

He was telling me he was going to propose.

Chris the developer, the business person, the maker, the professional, the theatre nerd, the tech obsessive... was becoming something else, too.

Something bigger.

Chris the husband, to his perfect wife.

Here’s the thing: It took a while before we met Elana in person. But my wife Leah and I agreed: We’ve known her—will always know her—forever.

I have a text where Chris is excited to have introduced her as his girlfriend for the first time. If only I’d known then how much bigger his world was about to get.

Elana is hilarious. She is wildly smart. And she is someone I feel lucky to call a friend.

My oldest friend marrying one of my newest ones—making each other’s worlds so much bigger.

When you’re from a small town, within an even smaller community—and an especially small-minded one—it’s easy to forget that the world is wide.

And full of love, if you know where to look for it.

I’m lucky—we’re all lucky—that Chris and Elana found each other in this wide world.

Their love makes the world bigger and more loving for us all.

Thank you Chris. Thank you Elana.

I love you both.

Congratulations.