i'm not going to change my facebook to a joint profile okay i'm not going to do it hello we would like to thank you all first of all for for coming to our um our wedding for enjoying our day with us and if you're in the room it's because we love you okay every single one of you um before i go into my speech what i'd like to do first of all is to recognize four empty small chairs on the table to my right um the four chairs represent four people that aren't with us anymore
but they are in our hearts um first of all we've got uh pete which is claire's dad sadly pete passed away when claire was only 14 years old i don't know much about him i know that he was hard working i know that he loved his family his household his clutch um and i know that he loved music he was a keen lover of music and for me i can relate a lot to that um i'm hard-working scott might disagree but i am um i love my family i love i love claire i love all
three of my children daisy and dixie um i i love music at home i sing a lot oh no they're they're not always the right lyrics it's not always the right tune or tone but i do sing secondly we've got claire's nan i had the pleasure of meeting her knowing her she was a lovely loving caring stoic woman um the phone in fact the first time i met her i was at a house and clara just got to get a cup of tea granddad was in the corner now grandad granddad isn't with us anymore but
he hasn't got a place to the table all right if you want to know more about it then speak to the speak to the family um so anyway so he was in the corner rabbit in a way and um going on about something or other and she nan looked up at me and said i'll [ __ ] hope he dies soon i hate him and i was like i was like and then later on i found out a little bit more about the story and i kind of understood what was happening and agreed um [Music]
next up is auntie adele or auntie adele i'm not sure how she's saying um and she was she was claire's great arm and was nan's sister is that right yeah yeah yeah now i i know nothing i know nothing about um antadel really apart from the fact that she loved waves and strays took him in all the time so she would absolutely love it [Music] pants she took in cats lastly is the g-man my um granddad was my constant he was my hero he was my father figure and got many many fond memories of grandad
probably the best one is he taught me to play golf and if i hit it a bit wrong which i did often because i just learned him he'd go oh no wanker what can i do what can i do that was brenda tell us granddad so please my first toast is to those in our hearts all right the speech um unfortunately i've got lenny here today who is gonna going to take care of the thank yous and the special thank yous um the stuff that i don't want to do that's what he's here for right
the special thank yous have got gifts but you you won't be receiving the gifts within this speech because it's not a [ __ ] award show [Laughter] my thanks my special thanks has to go to my new wife [Applause] she has done everything everything for this wedding i mean she's had support but she's literally done everything i last night i was thinking to myself what can i say that she has done and the truth is i haven't got a clue i've and to deliver a good speech at so we're dressed [Laughter] um yeah so so
claire is my special thanks um six years ago six years ago today we met um five years ago today i gave her a ring now i gave her this ring and it wasn't an engagement ring and i didn't want her to think it was an engagement ring because we'd only been together for a year so we were sat on her bed and um i gave her the ring and i said this isn't an engagement ring you've got to be clear right um and um i said but what it is is a promise i said it's
a promise that one day one day i'm gonna marry the [ __ ] out of you and i've done it [Applause] three years ago almost to the day uh we bought a house and we moved in together we bought we bought the g-man's house which just just made everything perfect it's amazing we moved in and uh immediately we started to find our our routine our other you know our way of living liam and chloe were coming over regular and things were things were absolutely beautiful i i wasn't ever i have never been as happy as
when we first moved in together um and then covey came coving meant that we didn't see liam and chloe as much and it it destroyed me it absolutely it it done me i i've never been so sad um so that was some real hard times as well as covid i went through uh a brain tumor scare in the first year in the second year i went through a stomach cancer scare um and and now i'm i'm suffering with depression and it is horrible it's absolutely disgusting but she's there by my side all the time and
i cannot thank her enough for being the person that she is [Applause] so one year one year ago um today i took her to london to watch a jersey boys which by the way is a fantastic fantastic show oh and at the same time i proposed and she said yes since then we've now got three dogs daisy dixie and della and um we are we're in love we're doing this it's amazing but but we almost almost didn't make it okay let me take you back six years and one week okay now claire and i were
sat on our on our sofas in our separate houses and uh i was scrolling through plenty of fish and i'm scrolling through flicking through and i see a picture of the profile of claire and she had these big fun sunglasses on big silly glasses and i thought [Music] she looks fun [Music] right and um so i sent her a message and uh and she replied and and we got chat and it was absolutely fantastic but claire had never messaged me first and claire had never messaged me first because she had never seen my profile and
claire had never seen my profile because her minimum hope requirement started an average man i don't do i don't do average anyway so we we got chatting and we got on really well and we decided that we would meet up in portland at the time i was only riding a bike so i thought to myself i better get there early just in case i'm a bit sweaty i'm gonna sort myself out so i turned up a little bit earlier and what i didn't know this time is that claire runs on clear time which is a
complete different time zone to to anybody else um so i was waiting at the the cinema for quite some time and she turned up and we got chatting i can't even remember what we were chatting about at this point um i remember looking at her thinking she looked so old [Music] because then two minutes later claire [Laughter] [Music] the uh the plan was just have a couple of drinks because i was riding and we had a couple of drinks and we got on really well things were going fantastic absolutely fantastic and then we went to
uh the next place and we're having a couple of drinks and i thought to myself i've got a ride home in a minute you know you have to kind of sure so we both decided that we were going to be um this was going to be the last drink and i'm thinking of myself yeah absolutely nailed this one i've smashed it she's she's you know she's the one our conversation was flowing things were really good and then claire claire looked up at me and she said um i can't believe you dropped an f-bomb in our
first date and i'm thinking oh no she doesn't like swearing if she doesn't like swearing i can't be me i can't i can't i can't be andy so um so i sat down and i stood up and i went [ __ ] you claire and i sat down right now now this was silence across the room and it was probably literally a second two seconds that was all but in my head it's like tick follow talk follow tick follow talk and i didn't i was like i'm looking around the room and everyone's silent and there's
no music and i look above claire on this balcony and there's this kid about eight years old like and then she laughed [Music] she laughed and she laughed and she laughed and in that moment i'm looking at her and i'm enjoying watching her laugh and i'm enjoying watching her look happy and i'm i'm ecstatic and i'm thinking to myself yes it hasn't gone as well as i wanted it to go and you know the joke she loved the joke or she's nervous or she's worried or she's laughing at me or laughing with me i didn't
care i didn't care because in that moment she was happy and that's what i loved and that's what i loved and it was in that moment looking in her eyes that i knew that there was going to be a second date please raise your glasses to the second date thank you [Applause] and he is the second love of my life
