My Wedding Speech
On Sunday 7th July 2019 I got married to Hanna. The following speech expresses as well as I can how I feel about that.
I am a lucky man.
I have the great fortune to be the son of diligent parents, to be brought up, fed, clothed, educated (at no little expense), encouraged, supported - occasionally berated when it was necessary. My parents were proud of my small accomplishments and generous enough to give me room for my own numerous mistakes. I did not value them highly enough until towards the ends of their lives, but they were there for me throughout.
I am a lucky man.
I have the good fortune to have an industrious and successful brother - whose professional accomplishments are rather beyond my understanding, but of whom my parents could always be justly proud. He has too often - but willingly - taken up the bureaucratic burden of deaths in the family. He has had the sad duty to write a number of eulogies for those family members and the skill and imagination to make them beautiful and honest. He has the good sense to marry a wonderful wife with whom he has produced that unheard of miracle: intelligent and likeable children!
I am a lucky man.
I have the - to me astonishing - fortune to have found a woman who understands me, loves me, and who I want to spend the rest of my life with. For she is clever, wise, funny, devastatingly beautiful and stylish, has wonderful taste in hats, questionable taste in men, and terrible taste in television programmes. I love her with all my heart.
I am an unlucky man.
My mother did not meet Hanna. Alas my mother died before I myself had met Hanna. I think they would have got on. Hanna as you probably know is terrifically interested in early 20th Century fashion - and my mother as a daughter of two generations of ladies tailors would, I am sure, have loved to tell her all about the world in which she grew up and her family stories. I wish my mother could have seen Hanna’s delight a year or two ago when we excavated a box of antique buttons from the family attic.
I am a lucky man.
My father did meet Hanna. Only once, and he was not well at the time, but he maintained his dignity, his good (and occasionally black) humour, and he was pleased to be introduced to her. In the very last conversation I had with him, the day before he died, I told him that I thought that Hanna was probably the person I would marry. We both knew he was dying - though not how imminent - and it was tremendously important to me to tell him while I could.
He told me that she was a very nice girl: there, Hanna, you have it on unquestionable authority.
I am also, of course, very lucky to have the support today of so many friends and relations. The schoolfriends who liked me when I was an appalling teenager and an equally appalling young adult. The friend who introduced me to dancing (which rapidly took over my life). Kind and considerate relations, family friends, dancing friends, close friends, often you are friends whom Hanna and I have in common.
As I believe I have mentioned, I am a lucky man.
I commend to you the act of adding up your good fortunes. There is a considerable balance. I offer it all to Hanna to share with me. She is the love of my life. She is my wife.