Speech by Richard Brown

Speech Type: Father of the bride/groom
Speech Creator: Richard Brown
Speech Date: Oct2005
On behalf of myself , Bev, Karen and Michael who have all shared in the organising of today may I welcome you and thank you for helping us celebrate Danielle's wedding to Carl.
I must say I'm pretty relieved that in the church for the first time in her life Danielle managed to say “ I will ” without questioning it.

My job today, and I did check on the internet, apart from welcoming you all here is to talk about the Bride and Groom so I'll start with Carl if that's okay.

I knew I was going to get along with Carl when he walked in on a conversation I was just finishing with Danielle in which we were discussing what drinks we were going to buy for Christmas. I'd only ever seen him drink lager so I asked him if he liked shorts, and with a bit of a worried look on his face he told me he never gets much chance to wear them.

If you held a survey asking people what they would like in a prospective son in law maybe the most popular responses would be, a doctor or a dentist , or a successful businessman. I am more than happy with Carl's attributes which are his patience and that he is hard working.

I am sure these are not Carl's only attributes but as I didn't get to see him in a pair of shorts that Christmas these are the ones that I've noticed.

His patience with the Children is wonderful, I've never heard him shout at them, and he'll sit and play with them for hours. No@one teaches you how to be a father, it's a natural instinct that not everyone possesses.
I think Carl is a credit to Karen and Michael and I'm pleased to announce our grandchildren are in safe hands.

According to the internet's guide to wedding speeches this is the moment where
I give Carl advise on the subject of marriage on which it has been said it is a 50/50 partnership, but whoever said that knew little about women and even less about fractions

So I will give you Carl my three bits of advise which are

1 You must remember the words of Oscar Wilde when he said “ Women are
to be loved not understood”.
2 Your wife will always have the last word in any argument, any word you come out with afterwards is the start of a new argument.
3 And finally when your wife wants your opinion she'll give it to you.

Britains first nudist beach was established in Brighton, the big film release
was Alien, the Ayotollah Khomeni seized power in Iran, and I'm sorry Nigel,
but it was also the year Margaret Thatcher came to power.

Pete Doherty, Shophie Ellis Bextor and Norah Jones were born, so was Johnny Wilkinson, Brian O'Driscoll and football's Michael Owen but these were all minor events to grace 1979 compared to the arrival of my daughter Danielle.

I have some wonderful early memories of Danielle like when Bev first brought her home. In those days with your first child they kept the mother and baby in for at least 5 days but you didn't get any rest as you are up all night feeding and changing and really there was no@one there to help. So when Danielle came home I took 2 weeks off work and did the night feeding and nappy changing downstairs so Bev could get some well earned sleep. That was a magical time in my life and it is something I will never forget we had some great conversations and surprisingly Danielle agreed with everything I had to say to her.

Danielle was an amazingly quick walker and talker, she was the first grandchild on Bev's side of the family so maybe being surrounded by adults improved her talking. I remember on her first birthday she told her nanny Eileen that she had been given pretty slippers, and when Eileen asked her where they were she went running off to get them and started shouting I've found them I've found them. People think I've got the birthdays mixed up when I tell them that story but it was her first birthday. In fact I remember we got quite worried about Chris as we were still only getting grunts by his second birthday, but we did have Danielle as an interpreter who was always able to translate.

As I've just mentioned Danielle's Nanna Eileen, I think this would be a good moment for us to toast the bride and groom's grandparents.
Firstly the three that are with us today, Bev's Father Vic, Karen's Mother Joan and her Father Ted, there's a joke there somewhere may you all still be with
us for your great grandchildren's weddings.
And secondly to the ones we have lost, my parents Sylvia and Nick, Michael's parents Barbara and Reg and Bev,s mother Eileen who are all terribly missed.

To those who are with us today
and those we have lost

The toast is “The Grandparents”

I don't want to dwell on any sad times but it would be strange if I didn't mention
what the family members already know that we nearly lost Danielle before she was 2 years old. That morning when it was touch and go was horrendous for all of us. Danielle required an emergency tracheotomy, to by@pass a blockage in her throat but by the time they got her to the operating theatre she had stopped breathing so she was given the procedure by a surgeon operating on an adjacent table as her surgeon was still scrubbing up.

The tracheotomy would normally be a small neat slit in the windpipe and a tube inserted, but as the surgeon had no idea where exactly the blockage was he literally slit her throat from top to bottom, inserted the tube and stitched her up either side. Now its what happened afterwards that I really wanted to share with you, and please remember Danielle was still under 2 years old.

Once they got Danielle breathing normally the worst was over , but they wanted to be sure everything was okay so Danielle was taken to the intensive care unit for monitoring. She was pretty beaten up and it was quite frightening really when you saw how many pipes and wires she had coming out of her tiny body, Her throat must have been very painful but as I said the worst was over because her life was no longer threatened.

The following day the nurses were concerned she hadn't passed any water, they had put her in disposable nappies which had remained dry. She couldn't speak with the tracheotomy so she couldn't say if anything was wrong.
Then one of the nurses asked us on the off chance if we were potty training her, we said we were but as we had only just started doing it we never thought to mention it. With that the nurse went and got a potty, lifted her on to it, tubes, wires and all and she filled it to overflowing. We were flabbergasted that even with everything that had happened to her she was determined to use a potty.

For the last 2 decades or more not only has she been my daughter she has been my friend and on numerous occasions my advisor. I know that's never going to change nor will my love for her.

So all that's left to do now is to toast the Bride and Groom.

Incidentally I forgot to mention Michael told me earlier that before he met Danielle Carl sent his photo to a lonely hearts club. Apparently they sent it
back with a note saying that they weren't that lonely.

Right back to the toast

Can everyone charge their glasses

Here's to love, laughter and happy ever after
As they start their married life together

The toast is “ Danielle and Carl “