How to Write a Wedding Speech
You’ve got a wedding coming up and you are going to have to write a wedding speech and get up and present it on the big day. How do you feel about that prospect? Excited? Nervous? Apprehensive?
You may well be feeling all three of these emotions and to put your mind at rest immediately, let me say it’s quite normal to feel that way.
Did you know that in survey after survey when asked what they feared most, public speaking came up at the top of most people’s list? Most people fear speaking in public more than they fear dying – WOW! That’s amazing.
OK, so however you feel about wedding reception speeches you’ve got to give the speech so where do you start. Like all presentations, a wedding day speech should be approached in a logical manner. Once you have the basic structure in place you can throw in all sorts of casual jokes or comments and still stay on track.
Follow these few simple steps to writing your wedding speech and you’ll not go far wrong.
• Don’t stress, you are making a wedding speech, not a presentation to a convention or conference. You are among friends and family so you don’t have to worry about being perfect and anyway people will expect you to be nervous.
• Memorizing your speech can be difficult if you are not used to giving them so refer to notes.
• List the main points that you want to cover on postcards rather than write out the complete speech on paper. If your hands are shaking it won’t be so noticeable if you have a few prompt cards rather than sheets of paper.
• Keep contact with your audience, look around the room. Working from bullet points will allow you to speak more naturally and keep the audience involved. Whatever you do you want to avoid reading word for word from a pad of paper.
• Keep it short. It’s important to cover all of the main elements of your speech, especially of you’re the best man, but don’t go on any longer than necessary. One of the biggest considerations for the best man is which cards to read out if any. Reading all of the cards from guests could take an hour in itself. Better to read special cards only or cards from people who couldn’t attend for some reason for instance. The guests can always read the cards themselves afterwards.
• There is proper wedding etiquette so be sure to follow that, making sure you thank people properly.
Here are a few elements to consider.
First and foremost let’s cover the jokes. It has become quite common, especially for the best man to opt for a humorous wedding speech and include lots of jokes about the Bride and Groom. Don’t stress yourself here, if you’re not a natural stand-up comedian don’t feel that you have to put on a one hour comedy routine – you don’t.
By all means include some jokes, some comical instances that you have shared, some pictures of them when they were babies, (which embarrasses the Bride especially) and comment on how they have blossomed into adults. It isn’t compulsory to be a comedian so don’t worry.
What you include in your speech will depend on who you are. The best man will have different elements to include to the father of the bride for instance.
It’s quite possible that not everyone at the wedding will know who you are. There will be relatives and friends from the other party depending who you are related to or representing that may not have met you before. The first thing you must do then is to introduce yourself. Don’t make it a lifelong biography, keep it short and relevant.
If you are the bride’s father tell the group that you are and thank everyone for coming along. You will want to follow with saying how very proud you are to be at your daughter’s wedding. You may want to introduce the bride’s mother along with yourself if she is not going to say anything specifically.
If you are the best man it is quite often the case that you are not related to either the bride or groom and may be unknown to most of people at the wedding. It is therefore very important that you introduce yourself properly first because you are going to be the main organiser of the day and you need the guests to relate to you.
Explain how you know the groom, relate some of your past experiences together, like you were at school together, you work together or have come to know each other in some other way.
As best man the next important thing to do is to thank the groom for doing you the honor of asking you to be the best man. The best man is a key role at the wedding and should be looked upon as a privilege. Next thank everyone for coming along and supporting the couple’s special day.
If you are still looking for inspiration there are lots of resources to help you out like this one here. Wedding speeches
Write The Perfect Wedding Speeches And Toasts
Dan Stevens and Sally Samuels built this Web site to provide speech givers out there the security and peace of mind that comes with knowing their wedding speech will be fantastic.
Wedding Speeches Made Easy
Wedding Speech or Toast Making a wedding speech or toast can be a daunting task for many people.
Worry Free Wedding Speeches : Wedding Speeches And Tips
There are a lot of resources in print and on the Internet on how to write wedding speeches. Be careful with just copying things out, though. You might not get arrested for plagiarism, but the insincerity may shine through.
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