If you’ve been asked to raise the toast at a wedding, you will want to know how to write a wedding speech that is honest, emotional and memorable. Being asked to raise the toast at a wedding is an honor. While wedding toast samples are easily available online, you do not want to look up some generic samples of wedding speeches and just learn it by heart for the big day.
If this is the first time you are raising a toast at a wedding and you do not know how to write a wedding toast, follow these tips for a simple structure, and you really can’t go far wrong…
Click Here for Ready to Use Sample Wedding Speeches and Toasts
Tips for Writing a Wedding Speech
1: Introduce yourself and tell everyone what your relationship with the bride and groom is.
2: Outline what you plan to speak on, but don’t let it sound like the introduction to a lecture! Just give a brief note on your perspective.
3: Inject a little humor; bring in a light-hearted element early on and your listeners will warm to you immediately. If you are not confident enough to rely on your own humor, use quotations or see other examples of how to write a wedding speech for inspiration, and adapt bits and pieces that are appropriate to the couple.
4: Try to give the speech a theme. If you take one aspect of the couple’s relationship or their personalities or perhaps their plans for the future, you will engage your audience’s interest and keep their attention. It sounds much more professional to have a coherent subject area and work around it than simply to string together a number of different anecdotes. Also, try to develop a sense of progression. This can be chronological, from past to future, or moving from one family or individual, to another or you can evolve your own structure depending on what you want to say. A list of ‘subheadings’ can be helpful signalers to your audience as to what you are saying. Use phrases such as ‘On the subject of…’, and ‘Speaking of which…’ which will all help lend your speech a sense of integrity.
5: When writing a wedding speech, focus on the bride and groom rather than yourself. Speeches that are all about the speaker are inappropriate in this context and your audience may feel that you have stolen the couple’s thunder.
6: Be sure to include all the thank yous that are appropriate for your role in the proceedings. Even if you don’t use any reminders for the other parts of your speech, it’s worth having a list in front of you for this part, in order to prevent the possibility of forgetting someone key and hurting their feelings.
Tips for Delivering the Toast
When you are giving the speech, you will likely be a little nervous to begin with. But your audience will be expecting that and wedding parties are among the most forgiving audiences you can find, so don’t let it worry you and you’ll find you slip into a calmer, more relaxed frame of mind very quickly indeed.
Make sure you get your audience’s attention. Give them a few moments to settle down before you begin, take a deep breath or two and remind yourself to speak slowly. Once you get going, you’ll find it’s actually quite fun! And once you’ve done it, you’ll be surprised at how many people ask you for advice on how to write a wedding speech for themselves!