I know it sounds crazy but hear me out. I had a close male friend in highschool. Dated him in college, broke up with him, but ended up friends again because we had so many mutual friends and joint commitments that it was impossible to avoid each other. That friendship blossomed until he became my very best friend, and continued throughout my relationship with my fiancé. But now my fiancé and I are arguing over whether or not he should make the toast/speech at our wedding reception and it's making me so sad.

Before we got engaged, my partner and I would discuss our wedding and as I voiced my hope that my male best friend would be able to stand as my Gent of Honor, he would go along with it and even comment that his female close friend should then be the Best Lady (which I was fine with btw). Then after the proposal, his tune changed and he was no longer comfortable with my friend standing in the wedding. So I compromised with letting him give the speech, and he seemed happy with that. We discussed on multiple occasions over the past 5 months that this was the plan. But now tonight, weeks after I already asked my friend to give the toast (with fiance's permission!), he's telling me he doesn't want him to do that either.

On one level, I get where he's coming from, so I'm looking for ways to compromise again, but it's really upsetting to me. For one thing, my fiancé is being such a jerk about it in his approach. He broke off a conversation about an unrelated topic to say "Oh by the way, I'm not letting ____ give the toast at the reception anymore". He's comfortable with us going out together, knows we're not romantically involved anymore, but his reasoning is: tHE oPtICS 🙄 It's coming across that his image in front of his other friends is more important to him than whether or not I'm happy on our wedding day. Not only that but everyone who knows that my friend and I used to date, also knows that we stayed close. Nobody will be surprised or taken aback, so I'm not even getting his logic as to why that matters so much. But most importantly, this is my closest friend. And not the talk-every-day-on-the-phone kind of close, but the saved-me-from-commiting-suicide kind of close. There's no romantic feelings there on either end, just years of support. I know no matter who else I choose to replace him, on the day of the reception I'll be thinking, it should've been him. And no matter what else he does, he'll feel a little hurt that he doesn't get to give the toast anymore. It just doesn't feel fair.