The best wedding speech I've ever read was a list, written by a Japanese groom in Wisconsin. The groom is my college friend Kazuma. He sent it to me before the reception, to ask if his English was okay. It wasn't okay. It was perfect. Here's part of it: "Things I learned from the Brekke family in four years. Friday is fish fry. It is not a meal. It is a weekly meeting where everyone you know eats fish and nobody goes home before ten. Nine minutes after I met Kristin's uncle, he asked me who my team was. I said I didn't have one. He said, 'You do now.' I own three foam cheese hats. I wore one to my office in Tokyo. Nobody asked. Everybody wanted to. At a supper club, before you order, they bring a plate of raw carrots, celery and crackers. Nobody asked for it. Nobody knows when it started. Everybody eats it. I have decided this is the most Wisconsin thing in Wisconsin. Fresh cheese curds squeak against your teeth. If they don't squeak, Kristin's grandmother will not allow them in the house. I now judge all cheese by sound. My mother thinks I have changed. Kristin's brother drove six hours through snow to help me move one couch. I offered cash. His face fell. Then he made me carry the heavy end." Kazuma told me what happened after the speech. His parents were in the second row. They had flown in from Osaka. They don't speak English. They had smiled politely through every word. Then Kristin's father stood up with a glass. He had spent four months learning a toast in Japanese from YouTube. His pronunciation was terrible. Half the words were in the wrong order. Kazuma's mother understood every one of them: "Please don't worry about your son. He has a family here too." Kazuma's mother did not cry at her own wedding. She cried at this one. Two days later, at the airport, Kristin's brother picked up both of his parents' suitcases. Kazuma's father, 68, reached to take one back. Her brother's face fell. Kazuma's father understood. He let go. That man has carried the heavy end his whole life. In Wisconsin, for one morning, somebody carried it for him.