Maid of Honor Speech

May 19, 2012

So great to see all of you, both friends and family, and new faces as well.  My name is Eliza O’Neil, and I am the sister of the bride.  Thank you all for being here.

Tim Facebook Anecdote

Shortly after I met Tim, I “friended” him on Facebook.  Carrie had introduced him as someone important in her life, and I had the feeling he’d be around for a while.  He and I had hung out on the giant couch in my parents’ living room and watched TV, played board games (the requisite O’Neil family initiation activity), and ate chips and salsa together.  He even asked my opinion on a pair of corduroy pants he’d recently purchased.  Based on the aforementioned activities, I think you’d all agree that this degree of intimacy certainly warrants a Facebook friend request.  I felt pretty confident about my decision, and knew Tim would be thrilled by this gesture.

Days passed.  Must be a busy guy, I thought.  Maybe he lost his computer.  Or forgot his Facebook password.  Maybe he’s injured… though I probably would’ve heard about that from Carrie.  Soon, reality set in.  I lost hope and settled on the only explanation possible in such a scenario: Tim hated me.  I wracked my brain for interactions I’d had with Tim that I’d potentially misread – I’d offered him goat cheese at one point, even though I later found out that he hated goat cheese… but certainly that couldn’t justify a friend rejection.  I did get a little aggressive during our game of Scattergories.  Yeah, I guess I can see that he would resent me for that.

Finally, I cracked.  I was riddled with self-doubt and had to get to the bottom of Tim’s blatant unwillingness to have me in his life. The next time I saw him, I asked him, trying to sound as breezy as possible, whether he had received my Facebook friend request.  Unfazed by my question, Tim answered that he was more interested in establishing a real friendship before basing all of our interactions off of sarcastic and impersonal one-liners through the Internet.

It was then that I was first exposed to Tim’s philosophy around the relationships in his life.  He doesn’t accept surface-level interactions, but rather asks thoughtful questions that indicate his genuine interest in my life, passions, and ideals.  He is a great listener, and he remembers everything.  I value his investment in the people he cares about, and the fact that he is committed to building truly meaningful relationships.

Carrie

Cut to Spring 1992.  

Carrie’s desire to create strong, high-functioning communities started with a big box of wooden blocks and about a dozen troll dolls, all with different colored hair and belly-button gemstones.  Though we would create make-believe community and interpersonal dysfunction, we would always find a way to resolve it – often by having the particular trolls who were fraught with intense personal animosity step aside and talk through the issue at hand by using conflict management strategies with an interest-based relational approach.  Is anyone surprised she ended up doing what she does for a living?

But Carrie’s constant desire to make everything okay applied to her everyday life from an early age.  As a young kid, she would turn around in the booth of a restaurant and introduce herself to her neighbors, making sure not to leave out the exact address at which she lived, her birthday, and her favorite ice cream.  By the end of the meal, every other person dining would know everything about Carrie there was to know, just short of her social security number.  When our family car, Mobenzy, got hopelessly stuck in a giant patch of mud on the way to a family cabin in northern Maine, it was Carrie who initiated trekking through the woods with our Dad to find help, while I slept in the backseat and our Mom held down the fort.  As a child, if I was sad or angry, Carrie would shut my bedroom door behind us and work through the issues before finding a way to make light of the situation.  We would always be laughing hysterically at the end of the day.

Carrie – you make everything more than “okay.”  You are a fiercely loyal sister – passionate, loving, and committed to my happiness and success just as much as your own.  It’s either because of your influence or your support that all the wonderful things in my life have happened, and I am forever grateful to you for that.  I love you so much.

Both C+T

So, it’s no surprise that Carrie and Tim work so well together.  They both care about relationships… they care deeply about the people around them, and I know every single person here knows what I’m talking about.  I’m so happy you two found each other.  I know you will thrive as a pair not just because of your shared passion for exploring, thinking, and making the world a better place, but because of the weight you place on the people you carefully weave into your lives, and the powerful, supportive communities you build around yourselves.  I feel lucky to know you both separately, and even luckier to be a part of the next chapter with the two of you together.

And in case you’re wondering, Tim and I are now Facebook friends.

Congratulations, Carrie and Tim!  (Raise glass)