The other day Yvo tags us in a photo of a bottle of bubbly that we got her during the bachelorette party. Reminding us of all the laughs and fun we had at her wedding about a year ago.
This combined with talking to Filip about giving speeches the other night brings back the memory of writing my bridesmaid speech for Nick and Yvo’s wedding. The older we get the more I fail to recollect moments and their details, but moments like these just take a spark to swell with detail in my mind.
Flash back to just a little over year ago, Yvo emails us her hourly itinerary of the wedding day events. My mind glosses over a line “9:15pm – Bridesmaid speech” with a kind of wild terror. To be perfectly honest, I’ve never felt comfortable giving speeches, and would much rather be a puppeteer of situations, than the main show. But in my heart I immediately commit to doing a speech, despite of my apprehension.
On Saturday and I parcel out four hours, the first two hours are spent on Google and YouTube with the search criteria: good wedding speeches. I’m not sure that in those two hours I read or saw any good ones, but similar to a resume writing exercise, at least I could tell which ones were bad.
The second two hours are spent in the living room with a notebook and pen. It’s just easier to focus without the world at my fingers begging me to take a break of online shopping. Words come easily and before I know it, I’m done. I edit the speech about five times before practicing out loud. On the page it looks long, but when I time myself it seems ok.
I’m happy. I feel like we don’t often get the chance to tell the people we love how we see them, and how much they mean to us. This is my chance to say much more than my usual abrupt utterance of “You’re awesome.” Pen and paper down, I eagerly transcribe this into a text file and save it in Dropbox above the folder structure, so that I can easily access it and have it with me at all times.
Jen emails a couple days later and asks what we wanted to do about speeches, and if one of us wanted to do a solo speech then “more power to you”. We all hate speaking in public, but heck I’ve already got this speech written, so I volunteer to speak solo.
I’m talking to Laurie about the speech and my trepidation, “Is it worthy of this occasion?” She always knows what to do when I’m being insecure, volunteering to help me read and edit it. Did I mention she’s “awesome”? I digress. Sending it her way she confirms that it definitely isn’t too long, but there are some parts she’d cut out as they don’t flow as well in the story I’m trying to tell. She highlights these paragraphs for me and I remove them, and read it aloud to myself again. Yes! It sounds better.
Day of. Ceremony complete. Nick’s brother Andy and I are walking behind Nick and Yvo and the photographers. I’m deep in thought lamenting how I forgot her flip-flops in the car, when Andy interrupts my thoughts asks me what I’m going to do for the speech. He hasn’t been really inspired yet. My only answer is what I did for my own, “You share something extremely special with Nick, you’re his twin brother. No one can understand that bond you have, and this is a story only you can tell.” I’m not really sure if this is helpful, but this is the only advice I can give.
The Pier
We get to the final venue, have snacks, chit chat, it’s all a blur. Then the music stops and Andy hands me the mic. I bring up my speech from Dropbox, clutching it for dear life. I lament in my head again how I hate talking in front of big groups of people. My arm shakes, but I steady it against my side, the room goes quiet and I’m just in my head looking at Nick and Yvo smiling at me as I start:
Hi, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jessica and I introduced Nick and Yvo, or as I like to call the celebrity combination of their names. Nee-VO. (Please use this often, they love it )
As as some of you also might also know I recommended they not date as I’m completely over-protective of my friends. But before we get to how they met, I wanted to talk about how I knew each the bride and groom in their single lives.
Yvonne, I met 7 years ago through my college group of friends. The very first time we hung out, we went shopping, and she bought a really cute pair shoes. Little did Yvonne know my first real thought of our friendship was actually… Gosh, I’m glad we have the same shoe size, so I can ask to borrow those someday.
But the coolest thing about Yvonne is she’s always down to do anything, regardless of how ridiculous it sounds. Photoshoot in the woods? OK! A whole day of video games? Absolutely. She’d keep me company selling clothes at the Thriftshop before it was a catchy hip-hop song. More than being a fun person to hang out with, she’s one of the nicest, most thoughtful and generous people I know.
Now for Nick. Nick to me will forever be “the intern” in our work group of friends. He would drive his Miata with the racing seats, that was so loud that you couldn’t talk to anyone while riding in the car. When it rained he would drift his car in the work parking lot. He would wear shorts and cut-off tshirts every day to work. But he always have the one shirt dress shirt that would be pressed in his cubical that he would wear on fancier occasions.
The night they met at Circa, it was a girls din night, and I remember clearly how Lady Gaga’s Just Dance was playing in the background as some guy dancing poorly in a puffy jacket kept trying to back his ass up into our table. Nick gives me a call saying his friends lamed out and wanted to go home, and I invited him to meet my girls for drinks. He shows up and tries to pay for our meal even though he hadn’t eaten with us, while completely generous and kind, his offer was completely denied as Jen, Yvo and myself throw down our own money. Later Yvo would reveal to me that her first thought of Nick was that he was “gorgeous”.
Together Nick and Yvo are kind of amazing, it’s completely evident now Nick has more than one shirt! And even some with cufflinks! and Yvonne now darts through traffic with more skill, and knows so much more about cars that she ever has. I’ve never been happier to admit that I couldn’t see right away, what they knew from the start. They belong together, as best friends, and as happy in love as they were the first time I saw them together. The only time I’ve ever seen them fighting was adorable, as they both raced out of their seats to struggle over who would pay for a tank of gas.
Congrats to two of my favorite people. Let’s raise a toast for Nee-vo.
Happy One Year Anniversary Nyvo!
