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To
Noah
&
Mia
A toast given by Jake Hartley — Noah’s brother
✦
N O A H H A R T L E Y & M I A C H E N · S A T UR D A Y, J UN E 1 3 , 2 0 2 6 · T H E O R C H A R D H O US E ,
R H I N E B E C K , N E W Y O R K
✦
G
ood evening, everyone. For those of you who don’t know me — I’m Jake,
Noah’s older brother. And I owe you all a confession: I promised myself I
wouldn’t cry today. Then Noah looked at Mia during the vows, and I completely lost
it at “in every lifetime.” So if this toast gets a little shaky, you know exactly who to
blame.
Growing up, I had the best little brother a guy could ask for. He was the kid who
read the manual cover to cover, measured twice, and always had a plan. If Noah said
he’d be somewhere at seven, he was there at 6:59. He was careful and steady — the
person everyone leaned on, even when he was the youngest one in the room.
He was also, for the record, terrible at letting me win. When we were kids, I could
beat him at anything. Somewhere around high school, that quietly changed — and I
have never mentioned it. Until now.
Then he met Mia. And for the first time in his life, my brother — the one with a
spreadsheet for everything — did the most beautifully unplanned thing imaginable:
he fell head over heels.
Suddenly, the man who organized his sock drawer by color was flying across the
country for a girl he hadn’t stopped thinking about since the first date. He learned to
dance. He started taking photos of sunsets — actual sunsets, and posting them. That
is not the Noah I grew up with. That is a man in love.
Mia — from the moment Noah brought you home, we all understood. You tease him.
You tolerate his playlists. You make him laugh at himself. In the time you’ve been
together, I’ve watched my careful, guarded brother become softer, braver, and
happier than I’ve ever seen him. Thank you for loving him. And welcome to the family
— officially now. No returns.
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