Speech by Katrina Etchegary

Speech Type: Best man
Speech Creator: Katrina Etchegary
Speech Date: sep02
This is the speech that I gave at my Younger brother's wedding.

I am sure you will all agree the bridesmaids look absolutely gorgeous today.
They have carried out their duties of ensuring the bride arrives here on
time and cured Denise of all her wedding day nerves. Out of interest how
many vodka and cokes did it take? Seriously though, you have done a great
job and you should all be congratulated. So, on that note, let's all raise
our glasses and toast the bridesmaids.

Good afternoon everyone, I'm sure you'll all agree this has turned out to be
a brilliant wedding celebration.
I'd just like to start by thanking everyone on behalf of the Bride and
groom, for sharing their wedding day, especially those who have travelled
long distances to be here.
For those of you who don't know me I am Dion's older brother Trevor. It's
great for me to do this job today because after all these years Dion has
finally admitted that I am the Best Man. Now you will all expect me to have
a lot of fun at Dion's expense, but after all the expense he's had already I
‘d better keep it to a minimum.
Seriously though, one of the duties of the best man is to sing the groom's
praises and tell everyone about Dion's good points. The problem is, one, I
can't sing and, two, he doesn't have any good points. Well.. except for
being generous, kind-hearted, good natured and good-looking. We do after
all come from the same gene pool.
Dion was born on the 20th of November, 1978. I did try to link this with
some big world event, but it seems that nothing else of great importance
happened that day. But as far as I am concerned the birth of my baby brother
was a big enough world event.
I thought I'd ask Mom if I could borrow some embarrassing pictures that she
might have, to which she replied "Oh do you want one where he's showing his
Willie"? But, I'm sorry Dion; no company in the world could blow it up, so
that you could actually see anything. But yes, I did get some pictures done
and they're in an album here, so you can all look at them later.
As all Dion's friends would tell you, he is the last person in the world
that anyone would think would settle down and stop his partying ways. Now
don't get me wrong, Dion can still party with the best of them. As the
people who attended his bachelor party can attest to. But Dion has calmed
down a lot from his younger years when he used to call mom and tell her that
he had no money for food, and he wanted her to "loan" him some money. What
mom didn't know was that he always had a couple hundred dollars put back
each week for his downtown fund. I did not realize it at the time but he
was a great salesman even then as Pinnacle Office Solutions is only now
realizing. He was destined to be a salesman; he could always talk his way
out of trouble or talk people into seeing everything his way, especially mom
who always gave him his own way. No matter what he wanted, she gave into
him. For example, one year, he had to have a drum set for Christmas.
Another time, he just had to have an electric guitar. He was going to play
them all the time. I think he played them for 1 week and gave them up.

However this persistence and good salesmanship also helped him to win Denise
‘s heart. I can remember Dion would come home everyday from school talking
about this girl that was in his class and how he had to find some way to
date her, but couldn't because she was seeing someone else at the time. At
first I did not think anything of it, for those of you that know Dion,
understand that he has had his share of girlfriends in the past and hasn't
had a problem getting a date. So this new girl did not seem too important to
me at the time. But after awhile I started to think that there must be
something special about this girl because Dion would talk endlessly about
her. His behaviour was nothing like I have ever seen from him before.

I was to later find out that Dana (Denise's sister) was going through much
the same thing that I was. It seems that Denise was also coming home talking
about Dion in the same way. Dion even went so far as to start going to Dana’
s house to get his hair done, to get in with the family. Dion is very
particular about his hair, so it was a big accomplishment for Dion to let
someone he didn't know do his hair. His friends gave him a nickname of
helmet head, because his hair is always as hard as a rock and there is never
a hair out of place. Dion's tactics seem to work because he was soon dating
Denise after that.

I remember the first time that I met Denise. Dion and myself were living in
an apartment together on Alice Drive when Dion & Denise were going to school
together at the collage of the North Atlantic. For those of you who don't
know me, I am an avid hunter and had just started to hunt for rabbit in the
Avalon area. I had caught a few rabbits earlier that week and decided to
cook them one day. I tried to make rabbit stew like mom used to make all the
time. The stew did not quite turn out like moms, but I thought it tasted
fine. Little did I know that Dion had decided to invite half his class home
for dinner on that particular day. Just as I was sitting down to eat they
all showed up at the door looking like a pack of hungry wolfs. Included in
the pack, was this girl that I knew right away was Denise because Dion never
stopped talking about her when he was home. Dion introduced me to everyone
and I offered them all some rabbit stew. Denise took one look at the stew
and I thought she was going to be sick She lost a few shades of skin colour
that day. Needless to say I had to get her something else to eat after that.
I think I almost scared her away from Dion at that point. But thankfully I
didn't or we wouldn't all be here today.

Now it gives me immense pleasure to invite you all to stand and raise your
glasses in a toast for Dion and Denise, Mr and Mrs Caines no less, who
deserve to be here with each other today We wish them well for the future,
and hope they enjoy a long, happy, and fruitful marriage. To Dion and
Denise