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Good evening, everyone.
I’m Sophie Turner, and I am impossibly happy to be standing here with all of you at our rehearsal dinner. Thank you for being our people—the ones who made us, shaped us, cheered for us, and in at least one case taught me the proper way to hold a paint roller. Tonight feels like a warm-up lap before tomorrow’s big ride, and it means the world that you’re all here.
To my family—thank you for loving me into the kind of person who could recognize a good thing when he matched with me and admitted he was terrible at bowling. You taught me to be adventurous and to laugh even when things get messy—both of which turned out to be essential life skills in love and in home improvement. To my bridal party—my brilliant, patient friends who held me through late-night freak-outs and early-morning to-do lists—you are my chosen sisters. You have been there for every “Should we go with eggshell or cloud white?” text, and you agreed it was a trick question because it’s obviously the same color.
Michael’s family—thank you for welcoming me the way you did. From day one, I felt like I’d wandered into a family that knows exactly how to be kind and generous without fuss. You raised a man who is calm under pressure and endlessly resourceful—someone who can fix a leaky pipe with zip ties and also remind me that most crises can be solved with a snack and a nap. If you’ve ever wondered where his patience comes from, I think we can all agree it’s genetic. And I am so grateful I get to be part of it now.
So, our origin story. Six years ago, we matched on a dating app—two people who openly admitted we were catastrophically bad at bowling. We were so united by our incompetence that we decided to meet anyway. What we planned as a quick drink turned into a three-hour walk around the city debating, of all things, pineapple on pizza. I will not re-open the case tonight, but let the record show: I was right. He was… charmingly wrong. And if you’d seen the way Michael listened—actually listened—you would understand why I agreed to a second date before we even said goodnight.
Our first date was a taco truck crawl. Nothing says “romance” like trying to eat salsa while maintaining eye contact and not dribbling guacamole down your shirt. We failed at all three and laughed the entire time. That was the night I noticed something about us: we have different speeds—mine is “let’s do it, let’s try it, let’s go!” and his is “let’s make a plan and bring water.” Together, we always end up exactly where we need to be.
We decided to learn to bowl together—partly to conquer a fear, partly for research, and mostly because we look cute in rented shoes. Michael approached it like an engineer: quiet determination, YouTube tutorials, elbows tucked, hips steady. I approached it like… a windmill with confidence. We were hilariously bad, then mediocre, and eventually weirdly good. We learned how to encourage each other without keeping score, to celebrate the small improvements, and to high-five like champions of a sport nobody asked us to be in. Turns out those are excellent marriage lessons disguised as bumper-lane antics.
We explored the world together too—two international trips that doubled as tests of our patience and our packing cubes. Travel with Michael is a dream. He’s the guy who finds a pharmacy in a thunderstorm and knows how to say “Where is the nearest train?” in three languages with a smile. He is the steady voice in a crowded airport and the soft laugh in a tiny café when I inevitably order three pastries “for research.” On those trips, I fell in love with the way he moves through the world—gently, attentively, kindly. And I realized that every place feels like home when he’s next to me.
Then we bought a fixer-upper. We saw a cracked driveway and a leaning fence and said, “Oh yes, this is us.” We learned the language of studs and joists, and the poetry of “turn the water off first.” There were weekends when the house looked like it was losing a fight with a pile of dust bunnies, and nights when we ate cereal on the floor because the dining room was a construction zone. But we also learned how to be a team. We discovered that Michael can build anything if you give him time and a mysterious drawer of leftover screws, and that I can make even a hardware store aisle feel like a treasure hunt. We met in chaos and found calm together.
And then—our proposal. In our half-painted living room, with one wall fully committed and the other still swearing it was just trying on a sample color for fun, Michael sat me down on a tarp—nothing says romance like a tarp—and started telling me all the reasons he loved our life. He talked about the way we cycle on weekends, racing past the same stretch of trees that always smells like summer. He talked about our Saturday night pizza experiments, which have ranged from classic margherita to “why does the oven smell like that?” He talked about the moments in between, the quiet ones—morning coffee, shared playlists, the jokes made with eyes. And then, surrounded by paint cans and pizza flour memories, he asked me to marry him. It was imperfect and perfect in the exact way that love is meant to be.
Michael, you are calm under pressure in a way that makes me brave. You are endlessly resourceful in a way that makes our life feel expansive—like we can build anything if we take it one step at a time. You are gentle and funny and stubborn about exactly the right things, like tire pressure and ice packs. You’ve taught me how to breathe when I’m excited, and I’ve taught you how to leap when the net isn’t visible yet. Together, we’ve created a rhythm that is ours.
To our friends who have shown up with paint brushes, borrowed ladders, cycling route tips, and pizza stone advice—you are the scaffolding of our life. Thank you for the laughter, for the group chats that saved our sanity, and for loving us both in the ways we needed.
To my parents—thank you for trusting me when I said, “I met someone who makes me feel like myself.” And thank you for seeing him and saying, “Yep. That’s the guy.”
And to Michael’s parents—thank you for raising a man who meets the world with a steady hand and a warm heart. He loves me beautifully, and I will spend the rest of my life loving him the same way.
As we stand on the edge of tomorrow, I am so grateful for tonight—for the stories, the teasing, the hugs that last longer than they normally do. We’ve been together six years, and somehow it feels like a blink and a lifetime all at once. We’ve built a home from drywall and jokes, from bike rides and late-night pizza dough. We’ve argued about pineapple on pizza like it’s a Supreme Court case, and we’ve learned that the win isn’t the point—the conversation is.
Here’s what I know: love is not a grand gesture once a year. It’s a hundred small decisions—a text on a hard day, a repaired hinge, a shared bite, a steady hand on the small of a back in a crowded room. It’s learning to bowl not because you need to, but because you promised to try. It’s buying a fixer-upper and discovering that the thing you’re really fixing up is a life you get to build together.
So to everyone who brought us this far, thank you. Tomorrow we make it official. Tonight, we sit in the glow of what got us here.
Michael, I can’t wait to marry you. I can’t wait for more dusty projects, more smooth roads and tough hills, more pepperoni debates and basil victories, more ordinary days that feel like everything because they’re ours.
I love you. And I love that this—right here, with all of you—is how our forever begins.
Thank you all for being here with us tonight.
