How To Write A Wedding Speech

Hi. I'm Lawerence Berstein, a professional speech writer and I run greatspeechwriting.co.

uk and irrespective of the sort of speech you're going to give, there are two or three key things to bear in mind. Firstly, there is nothing to beat the preparation and hopefully you're not watching this 24 hours before you're going to give your speech, but the more time you leave yourself, the better. Second of all, don't worry about speaking for too long.

Often a 5-minute speech is much much more powerful and impactful than a 20-minute one and brevity is often the key. And finally, although a lot of the videos about creative or about writing a speech, please remember that you can't think about writing and delivering separately. They're one and the same thing.

You're writing to make the speech easy to deliver and if you think of it that way, then things should work. So you're thinking about putting pen to paper and writing a wedding speech. This obviously covers a huge number of potential roles.

You could be the father of the bride, about to burst into tears on the wonderful life that your daughter has led so far and your pride in her, right the way through to the bridesmaid, you might just want to stand up for 30 seconds and say something that's a little bit cheeky and funny about your best friend. But there are certain rules that I think are worth bearing in mind wherever you sit across that spectrum. For a start, think about the things you have to say, the must-haves, and on the other hand, think about the things that you might want to say, the things that could turn the speech into something little bit funny or that little bit memorable.

Now, the must-haves will tend to include a number of thank-you's, probably more if you're a groom or the father of the bride or if you're a bridesmaid or a best man. And most speeches will end with a toast. Now obviously, those will tend to be close in the amount of sincerity and will be crucial in structure in what you want to write down but what will be the element is what makes the speech memorable or particularly enjoyable for the people listening to it.

So get those right, the best place to start is to work backwards and imagine when you sit down having given your speech, what do you want people to be thinking and saying. If you like them to be in tears about the incredible affection you hold for the person you've been talking about, be it the bride or groom or someone else, them obviously you want to keep the thing relatively sincere and keep it relatively sensible. If on the other hand, you want people to be roaring with laughter and telling you it's the funniest thing they've ever heard, then you need to work that into the whole way you approach the structure and write in the sort of language that you use.

This balance of sincerity and humour is absolutely key to writing any wedding speech. Generally, I would recommend that no one ever goes to a hundred percent on either. No one wants to see a groom in tears because he's so over-emotional.

At the same time, no one wants to see a best man who just tells a load of cotton paced jokes for sort of minutes on end. And so therefore, try and make this speech while you're putting it on paper as relevant as possible. It's got to be relevant to three different people or groups of people in that room.

There's yourself because you've got to get something you would be comfortable to say if you were just talking to somebody one-on-one, there's the subject of your speech the groom or the bride or whoever it might be and it's got to be something they would enjoy and be happy to be said about them. And then there's everyone else in that room. And don't forget that if you leave them out, then actually what you've got is something that two people find funny and it's actually going to be alienating with the rest of the room rather than enjoyable.

So try not to use your speech as a forum for running