I took the microphone and smiled at the room. I said, before we move on, can we all raise our glasses one more time to the bride and groom, because tonight is theirs, and only theirs.
That was it. Thirty seconds. I did not say her name.
The room understood anyway. Two hundred people stood up at once and raised their glasses to my sister. The clapping went on so long the DJ turned the music up to let it ride. My sister was laughing and crying at the same time. Her husband kissed her forehead.
Melissa stayed in her seat. Her fiance, Josh, looked at the table.
For years I had been the one apologizing afterward, and all it took to fix it was giving the moment back to the person it belonged to.
After the first dance, Josh found me by the cake table. He said he was sorry. He said he asked Melissa not to announce it there, that he wanted to wait until after the wedding. He said she did it anyway, and he did not know how to stop her in front of everybody.
I told him it was all right. I told him it was not his fault.
Melissa did not speak to me for two months. Then, in January, she called. She did not apologize at first. She said Josh had postponed their wedding. He told her he did not want to marry someone who could not let other people have their own day.
Then she was quiet for a long time. And then she said something I never expected. She said she had always felt invisible growing up, the middle kid of five, and weddings were the one place everybody was paying attention. She said she knew it was wrong while she was doing it. She just could not help herself.
I told her she did not have to steal it. She could just ask for it.
She called my sister the next week and apologized. A real one, my sister said. Not the kind where she explains why it was not really her fault.
She started seeing a counselor. She and Josh set a new date.
A year later, Melissa got married in a little garden behind a church in Savannah. It was small and pretty and all about her, and she deserved every minute of it.
At the reception, she came over to me. She handed me a microphone. She said I had earned it, and I could say whatever I wanted for thirty seconds.
So I stood up and raised my glass. To the bride, I said, and only the bride.
She laughed so hard she had to sit down. Then she cried. Then she hugged my sister, who was in the front row, and whispered something I did not hear.
My sister told me later what it was. She said, thank you for letting me have this.
We all go to weddings together now. Melissa wears beige. She says it is her new favorite color.