By Matthew Shaw, founder and creative director of Sauveur Studios.
Speeches are integral to pretty much every wedding celebration, and as a luxury wedding planner, they are often one of my favourite parts of the evening. It’s the chance to understand more about the bride or groom through the eyes of a loved one, hear about their past, or just have a good laugh. Understandably, however, speeches bring with them both nerves and sometimes panic.
If you’ve had the honour of being asked to make a speech, these are my top four wedding speech tips to help you plan, write, and execute the perfect speech, set the room alight, and leave everyone wanting more.
1. Keep It Focused
Speeches can sprawl on quite easily when you’re trying to cover so much, and this makes them difficult to follow. When you first start planning your speech, it’s definitely helpful to throw lots of ideas around— but then try to hone in and focus on an overall theme or approach. This could be a personality trait, great jokes, or a more heartfelt approach, but it will help both you and the guests if there is a clear angle and theme.
When it comes to content, remember to keep it clean and universal. By all means, poke fun at your subject with a glint in your eye, but consider who may be present and keep the shaming stories for another time. Similarly, you should consider what your audience can relate to (no one wants to sit through a five minute private joke they don’t understand!).
2. Keep It Snappy
This may be one of those wedding speech tips as old as time, but I really cannot stress this enough! It is very difficult to distil a friendship or relationship into a couple of minutes, but you will be thanked for this, I promise. I recommend aiming for a length of three to five minutes, and no more than eight. The groom (or bride!) can allow themselves a bit longer.
A clear, tight, structure will help you deliver a brilliant speech, and leave everyone wanting more. This is equally important on the day itself; do not go off script and meander through your thoughts, because this can impact the timings of the rest of the meal. If you lose your place you can pause and refer to your notes, but do not freestyle and make it up as you go along. I have never seen a long wedding speech that has been well received…
3. Practice Makes Perfect
One of my most important wedding speech tips is rehearsing enough so that you know the overall structure and points off by heart, and then using notes as a guide on the day. Your speech will feel much more natural, and it will also help you look up and out across the room.
Depending on how comfortable you are with public speaking, you can then take the speech down to key points and highlights and practise using those, which can then be printed out for the wedding day.
4. The Devil’s In The Delivery
Once you have your notes ready, it is so important to practise! I’ve seen too many lovely speeches go slightly awry, as it is clearly the first time someone has delivered it out loud. Once you’ve written your speech, the crucial next step is to rehearse it so you are comfortable with your material and delivery. There three areas to practise for successful delivery are:
- Body language: Make sure you rehearse in front of the mirror so you can see how you deliver the speech. Keep an eye out for any nervous ticks you may have, and what your hands are doing. Ask the couple if you will be using a microphone and, if so, practice with a hairbrush. You should hold it steady, a few centimetres from your mouth. If you wave it around as you speak you’ll land up sounding like a train station announcement!
- Speed: Remember to keep it slow. We have a habit of speaking faster when nervous, which will make it hard for your audience to follow along. I suggest recording yourself so you can play it back and work out how much to slow down. It’s also important to allow moments for you to pause for reaction, and to take your breath or a sip of water. If helpful, write these into your notes as a reminder. Don’t try and rattle off the whole speech without any breaks.
- Energy: To avoid monotone delivery, work out the energy of each section in your speech and practise moving between different registers. This will help keep it interesting as well ensuring your audience follows along.
When you’re ready ready, I suggest putting this all into practice and running the speech for a trusted friend or two to gauge their feedback and getting some final wedding speech tips to fine-tune things from someone who knows you (and the couple).
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