Archive for the ‘Funny Wedding Toasts - Preparation’ Category

Groom Wedding Speech

Sunday, March 21st, 2010

If you have an upcoming Groom Wedding Speech you will want to read this. It’s your big day today, yes pinch yourself or punch your nose, it is indeed your very biggest day! Along with other responsibilities for the day, have you thought about the wedding speech every groom has to make at his wedding? The thought of writing and delivering it in the perfect manner can give a groom sleepless nights until he has mastered the art of charming people off their feet with his oratory skills. While some are blessed with this, some are simply not. However, as the saying goes, doing anything for the first time, is never easy. Nevertheless, there is nothing to panic about, you are going to be ready to go, and it definitely gets easier with practice.

Often, men find it embarrassing to discuss their feelings in front of many people, and at a wedding, there are many people whom the groom is going to have met for the first time. A large part of the bride’s family is often amongst them. Sometimes there are his relatives too, whom he has perhaps not seen for years. Letting out his deepest feelings in front of so many people, some of whom he will meet for the first time will certainly feel a little awkward. The groom wants to give it his best shot to have the perfect first impression. Therefore, the pressure is definitely high!

The first and the foremost thing is not the content of the grooms speech. What is more important is the style of delivery, which the groom obviously wants to be with ease and élan. A simple statement said with deepest feelings can have a more touching effect than using long, tongue twisting words. The content is surely important but the feelings give it a life. Heart felt words linger for a longer time. So, one can avoid using references and stories in the speech that will make you uncomfortable. Keeping it simple and meaningful is the trick.

While writing the speech the groom can use references and quotes of great authors. Referring to other people’s speeches is okay, as long as it is not parrot-like. Many writers have expressed themselves in beautiful words. Referring to them does give a speech an added poignance.

Once the speech is written, the delivery of the speech has to be effortless. It should be done in a manner that shows the true feelings of the groom towards his bride. It is his chance of strengthening his bond with her in a way that will hold a special place in her heart forever. One can use references or keep a note while speaking but should not read it out from a piece of paper. This looks very artificial. Another thing to keep a check on is not repeating oneself. Just because one has a good line and wants to draw attention does not allow repetitiveness. It is bound to make as much impact as it should if it is said in a befitting manner.

Wedding Speeches Don’t Happen By Magic

Tuesday, November 17th, 2009

The biggest obstacle I found in delivering a wedding speech was the lack of confidence. It was really weird because in my day-job I speak in front of large audiences on a regular basis and am never nervous and my talks are always very well received.

I therefore just assumed that I could deliver a funny wedding speech in the same way as I speak in my day job. However when it came down to it, the toast and wedding speech itself just were not very good or funny. I could not believe that best man toasts could be so difficult!

Afterwards I tried to work out what the problem had been and it dawned on me that when I am speaking for a living, it is on a topic that a) I know very well and b) I have been speaking about for over fifteen years. This familiarity with the subject, I realized, is what drives my confidence. When I tried to do a wedding speech however, I was not familiar with the material and I was not used to standing up in front of people and trying to be funny.

So with another wedding speech looming on the horizon, I needed to figure out how to solve these two problems. It came down to preparing funny material, and practicing it until it was almost word for word.

Ideas for material I got from a great book that I found online. The practice and tailoring of the toast I did on my own locked away for several hours! The key is taking a well defined speech framework and hanging all the unique things you want to say on that framework. There is no book that will give you every word of your speech but you can use their examples to build you own unique speech upon. In terms of the humor – you need to be careful not to get too bawdy, or too sentimental. It is a fine line and a lot will also depend on your timing. However once you have been practicing the finished speech for several hours, you will get so comfortable with the material that you will naturally find yourself ad-libbing and this is where you can get some real comedy gold coming out.

Once I had put all this into practice, the results were beyond my wildest dreams. No pre-speech fright and a laughing audience. Being word-for-word prepared has been central to my ability to give wedding speeches and toasts.

Funny Wedding Toasts and Speeches If You Are Not a Comedian

Thursday, November 12th, 2009

Funny wedding toasts can transform a speech. There is nothing worse than humorless wedding toasts or speeches. I know this because I have given them and listened to them! If we want to be able to give funny wedding toasts we need to have the confidence, understand the audience and prepare thoroughly.

Not everyone is born to be a stand up comedian. Very few people are able to stand up like Billy Connelly and give an hilarious stream of consciousness monologue to keep a crowd of 200 wedding guests entertained. In fact, to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, most people put a fear of public speaking above fear of death, so they would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy!

So given the fact that at some point in our lives we will be called upon to give a wedding toast or wedding speech, how can we avoid the gut wrenching anxiety during dinner before the speech and most importantly when the time comes, deliver a funny and sparkling toast or speech that will be remembered for ever?

The easiest way is to get a book with lots of ideas for funny wedding toasts such as funny groom toasts or best man speech toasts. You can find quite a lot of these types of books at your local bookstore but they can be quite expensive and may not be dedicated to the type of speech you are going to give. I gave up looking for offline books after not really being able to find something funny enough for the occasion (the guys getting married, Tom (my cousin) and Sarah are a real pair of jokers so they were expecting something pretty good from my speech) and I eventually started looking online.

At first I thought I would try and get something for nothing and I looked for free wedding toasts. There are a few around but honestly they are extremely lame and pretty much unusable. It’s only when I was prepared to pay a little that the content started to get exponentially better.

In the end I found an online book with exactly the right sort of funny wedding toasts I needed for my speech. I downloaded it straight away and was able in minutes to use several of the speeches in the book to tailor my own speech to Tom and Sarah. This preparation gave the confidence I needed so I was relaxed all day leading up to the speech and in the end, after my final toast, everyone was on their feet. It was quite something. The turn around from my previous efforts was unbelievable and I no longer have that pre-speech dread and now actually look forward to giving speeches!