Best Man Speech That never was....

I went to a wedding in Chicago recently and I stood up in the wedding.  There was rumblings about possibly making a speech at the rehersal dinner, like a co-best man speech thing, so I wrote something up, but then decided I wasn't going to do it.  I had done something like that before and the speech went so well it pissed off the best man, which was not the intent.  Lesson learned.  Anyway, I wrote the damn thing so I thought someone should read it, here it is:

I met Erik as a sophomore in college 15 years ago.  We were pledge brothers at Michigan State and to this day I am glad our Fraternity….really…needed….the dues.  Right away I thought there was something different about Erik and once I saw him dance at our first party, I was sure of it.  His infamous version of the Running Man aside we became good friends.

 

College is such a fun time, but you go through a lot of changes and when you graduate it is very easy to fall out of touch with people especially when you live far apart.  When we graduated I moved to Southern California and Erik moved here to Chicago.  Now as guys communication isn’t our strongest suit, so when we spoke about once a month or so and it lasted 2 minutes and we talked about sports for 1 minute 45 seconds of it, it was the roughly the equivalent of girls speaking daily for about an hour or so about their feelings. Essentionally we were letting each other know we were going to stay friends.  I remember when he first flew out to LA a few months into me moving there for a Hoover vacuum shot.  We were only going to get together for dinner one night, but I had always heard that you can really judge someone by who they call their friends. As a side note, Erik is Awesome!  Probably the coolest person on planet Earth.  Just kidding sort of.  I was new to SoCal, had just started to meet people and I have always considered Erik the type of friend you want to show off….after that night I moved from LA shortly there after.  But it nothing had to do with Erik.

 

Over time and a few moves I made it to Chicago.  Erik and I instantly reconnected and went from being good friends to best friends.  He plugged me into his gang of value adds and the 5 of us here tonight mockingly have call ourselves the Fantastic Five ever since.  The four years that I lived in Chicago have been some of the best times of my life and Erik is directly responsibly for most of them.  Whether it was convincing me to play on rec teams, vacations, going to parties, recapping those parties at Clark’s the next morning, waiting for Piro to show up at Murphy’s so we could go to the bleachers, hoping David was going to keep his shirt on this time and if we were lucky watch Nick do his Ice Ice Baby Dance at Bernie’s afterwards.  There are too many stories, examples and memories to share with you tonight., but rest assured as time has moved on and we have started to enter a new phase in our lives I cherish those memories more and more.  Because I realize what an incredible person Erik is and I know the chances to get together will be less and less. 

 

Always the organizer, Always in a good mood, Always keeping everyone entertained by letting us know “its funny, dude its funny!” Always my best friend……And then came Whitney…. Now the way Erik and Whitney met was partially due to her and I working together.  After a few dates Whitney and I started carpooling.  Which gave me the opportunity to become good friends with her as well.  At also gave me a unique seat at the chess match known as dating.  And as they would share details of how things were progressing, I was of course sworn to secrecy by both NEVER to let the other one know what they were saying.  So after about two months of dating and things going well Whitney let me know Erik better tell me he loves me soon, or there is going to be trouble.  Imagine my relief two days later sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley when Erik let me know “dude I told Whitney I love her last night”.  *Wiping hand across my forehead* Whoo that was close.  This stuff is more intense than The Hills, that’s a reference I probably I just shouldn’t have made.  As things continued to advance to what led us here today I have been able to see two people who are very important to me come together to make each other very, very happy.  I feel honored to have played a small role in it, lucky to have had such an unique view of it and blessed that they are both a part of my life.

 

I love you both and wish you nothing but happiness.  Please raise your glasses in a toast to the new Mr. and Mrs. Erik Jensen.