BlogWedding Speeches - 5 step guide
People often ask me about wedding speeches. Here are the 5 things I know:
1. LENIENCY
Know that the audience is the most lenient one you will ever have. They want you to do well and will be willing you along with every inch of their being. They aren’t expecting slick and professional. They want down-to-earth and likeable.
2. CHUNKS
The basic rules of communication still apply. Break your wedding speech into small, bite sized pieces. Each chunk must have a beginning and an end. Chunking up your speech also makes it a lot easier to put together - much more achievable. For example, you could keep each chunk or story to about 2 minutes and try about 5 chunks. With the intro at the start, and the warm and fuzzy bit at the end there’s your speech.
3. BEING FUNNY
There’s always a huge focus and pressure on “being funny”. Being funny is absolutely brililant, but if the humour doesn’t work it can confuse and distract the audience and create lots of nerves in the speaker. If you are going for humour, make sure it works. This means trying it out on some people without being too precious about others knowing your material. Better a few people know your material than a joke falling flat.
For years there has been an argument in comedy about content versus delivery. For what it’s worth I think it’s almost an equal split, with an emphasis on the content. Billy Connolly could read out the phone book and it would be funny, but not many of us are like Connolly.
Too many people overwork stories, putting in words that they normally wouldn’t use and extending the story to the ridiculous. If stories are unbelievable then they lose their humour. Think “interesting stories well told”. Honest, humble accounts made funny by your unique personality. Avoid crass and crude. Sounds good at the time (”he or she will be soooo embarrassed”) but many times you will feel like the idiot not them.
Stories about growing up (pranks, strange disco outfits, silly nicknames) can work better than stories about adulthood. Show you have a history with the bride/groom.
4. LENGTH
How long? I think the rule of thumb is 8-15 minutes. I can’t recall anyone saying “Great wedding speech but I wish it could have gone on for longer.” Seth Godin has a great saying called “kill your children”. There are always better stories than others, so be viscious and cut the ones that don’t work so well. Whoever you’re talking about will have many great moments to touch on - just include the best ones and make it short and sharp.
5. THANK-YOU LIST
List of thank-yous. There are about 10-15 people who come together to make a wedding special. They don’t always expect or want thanks, but if you thank some people be careful not to leave others out. You don’t want to be the catalyst of massive family fights in the future! Work with the bride and groom to develop the ultimate list - there are probably guides to help on the internet.
July 5th, 2007 at 7:30 am
These are excellent tips.
Two others I’d add - which I’m personally big on.
Are remember to be yourself - the audience are like children in that they easily spot a fake - and in alignment with your comment about them being lenient - I agree - they want you to do well. So they start off open and then if you are not you - they’ll switch off quickly and almost go the reverse (want you to get off)
The other thing is to remember why you are there.
People get so nervous about speaking - and if you go into how nervous you are - where is the focus? On yourself! And you are there in fact in service to others. So if you acknowledge there are nerve - and then focus on being there for the audience (the bride and groom) - it is amazing how quickly that seems to lose the nerves.
:-)
July 31st, 2007 at 12:18 pm
From my own experience when I was asked to be a best man, I thought yes what an honor but then, oh no, the speech. Luckily I could write poetry, so I wrote a poem and also luckily I hit the jackpot, it went down a storm, it was perfect and I had accolades all night from lots of guests and photographers. So I created my own website to help other guys and it has been very successful and I am so lucky to have had so much superb feedback from guys who were clearly quite nervous.
The beauty of a personalized poem is the fact it is personal, you can read it, and given time to practice, it can be delivered in a meaningful way and last but not least, you don’t have to let on it wasn’t you who wrote it!! But the real beauty is it is a comfort to the best man in case of emergencies; panic attack, too much to drink, etc. So if anybody wants help, I would be delighted to help out, just check out my website www.TheBestManSpeech.co.uk