Help!! Grooms wedding speech!!!

trigger_mike

Could someone tell if their is a order to thank people when doing a speech and when you are doing speech in which order to people read them out, im wondering who is before and after me! cheers for your help so far BTW!

nelly_2

Congrats mate.

I got married in December.


Its up to you the order , I swapped mine at the last minutes cos my mates were giving my best man a lot of grife so I put him 1st to get it out of the way for him (at his request).

I'm also the same I dont like big crowds but opperate fine for a small audience.

I had a small list of people who needed thanking, then ad libbed it from there wasnt sure what I was gonna say but got away with it completely.

The comb-over joke.

*groom stands up*

Hello and thanks for coming, now you think I may be nervous but I'm clearly not as nervous as (fil) as the stress has made him go bald.......and seemingly over night too.

One other thing, when I stood up I got a massive cheer and round of aplause which really made me feel as though they were all on my side that settled me a lot, and I'm sure it will for you.

Good luck and enjoy it matey, its too sodding expensive to NOT enjoy.

dccarm

I got married in April and was bricking it like yourself. It's actually okay though and in the end I found myself enjoying it. Everyone wants to see you do well, so they are all very supportive. And they don't really expect you to be funny, so there's no pressure to chuck in loads of jokes - the odd gentle one liner goes down better, particularly as you will probably have quite a broad audience.

I wrote my own speech by breaking it up into sections first, then writing a couple of lines for each section and then finally trying to link each bit together.

The basic headings were;

1. Thank everyone for coming, especially XXX for travelling all the way from wherever.
2. Thank the brides parents / family.
3. Thank my own family.
4. Thank my best man - few subtle jokes about his speech taht he is about to give.
5. Thank my bride
6. Thank the flower girls
7. Toast the bridesmaid.

Tips I would give you are;

Think about having the speeches first. Like Nelly said, you've probably paid a lot of money for this meal - you might as well enjoy it without worrying about public speaking.

Practice it on someone. You'll feel like a bit of a plonker, but it helps. I wrote down so many things that sounded good on paper but sounded awful out loud. And the only bit I fluffed on the day was the bit I didn't practice.

Don't learn it word by word - treat it like telling a joke - just remember your basic points and talk around them - it'll sound more natural.

Leave gaps for people to react. You'll find them laughing and awwing and you need to give them time to get back to listening. Drink some water every couple of sentences.

An alternative joke about the haircut (I take it he isn't going to be touchy about this?) - when your are thanking the bride's parents you could say "I know MIL in particular has been waiting a long time for this wedding - and not just so that FIL would get his hair cut"


There's an excellent website I found - I'll try and dig it out for you again. From memory, hitched.co.uk didn't have a huge amount on groom's speeches.

Best of luck - and enjoy yourself!

Crispy_Ambulance

Congratulations :beer:

You don't actually HAVE to give a speech. It is your wedding and if you don't want to, don't do it! The wedding police are not going to lock you up for not following tradition!

At ours, we did the speeches first - which was a great idea and took the heat off everyone. Our best man really didn't want to give a speech, so he didn't. Just thank everyone for coming and thank your bride for being gorgeous. Or let her do the speech?

pennineman

Crispy_Ambulance wrote:

Just thank everyone for coming and thank your bride for being gorgeous. Or let her do the speech?

Now that's a great idea, Crispy. Wish I'd thought of that 31 years ago . . . But we did have the speeches before the food. Worked OK . . . almost.

trigger_mike

Thank you all for your help, i have pened together a little speech and could do with some constructive advice with it, here goes:


Ladies & Gentlemen, I don’t want to take up too much of your valuable drinking time, so I’ll be as quick as I can.

I have been told that a good speech should be like a miniskirt…..
Short enough to be interesting but long enough to cover the essentials
With this in mind I will try to be brief.

On behalf of my Wife and I, We would like to say thank you all for coming and sharing our special day with us.

And also don’t forget those family and friends who could not make it or have past away, That they are here today, but only in our hearts …. let us remember them on this occasion.

Firstly I would like to thank Chris and Sandra, my new in-laws, for all the help (both organising and financially) that they have given us in arranging this reception, you both have really helped it be the day that it is.
And I’d also like to thank them personally for all the kindness and generosity they have shown me over the last 4.5 years and for making me feel so welcome in your family


I also have to thank them both for bringing up such a beautiful and intelligent daughter. Hannah is a lovely person. She deserves a good husband.
So I thought I’d best marry her before she found one!

I’d also personally like to thank Chris for shaving off that awful comb over after 30 years especially for today.

I would also like to thank both my mum and dad for their help and support, mum for moaning about wearing a hat and dad for moaning about wearing a suit!, no really thanks your all your help over the years, you made me the man I am… bet you wish you tried harder now!

To both our mums, we have a little thank you from both of us. (Flowers to mums)


Thank you to Chris Dykes for making the beautiful flowers and wedding cake. I can only imagine the time and effort that went into making them and the cake looks absolutely delicious & beautiful, we both thank you so much.

Talking of "delicious & beautiful (Pause look briefly towards bride, then towards bridesmaids, then...) the ushers Kevin and Andrew, are neither, and neither have they any prior experience as bouncers, but it's fairly obvious that they've done a terrific job at handling the paparazzi today and I for one, haven't seen even one Hello! Magazine photographer on the premises all day so well done lads.


The biggest thank you, of course goes to my beautiful wife, Hannah.
I can honestly say I was stunned when I saw how gorgeous you looked walking down the aisle this afternoon, I’m really the luckiest man in the world and I thank you so much for saying yes to me and becoming my wife and joining the Carpenter clan.


Finally, one of my most pleasant duties today is to thank and propose the toast to the bridesmaids. Chloe, Kim, Kristy, Lisa, Shannon and Abbie for doing a brillant job today and I am sure you will all agree with me that they all look lovely.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the bridesmaids [TOAST]

Before I sit down I’d like to thank my Best Man and great friend Gavin,
They say being a best man is like snogging the queen, a great honour but nobody wants to do it!
Thanks for all your helping organising such a great stag do I enjoyed it enormously even the part where I got covered in shaving foam and cling filmed to that lamp post in Norwich City Centre.

I'd also just like to stress that he's never been one to let the truth get in the way of a good story so I hope you bear this in mind when he stands up to speak in a moment!

On that note I'll pass to him, but not without firstly saying Ladies and
Gentlemen, thank you all again for being here today, for the wonderful
gifts, for your good wishes and most of all for your friendship now and
in the future. Here's to a wonderful evening

So Ladies and Gentlemen, my Best Man Gavin

nelly_2

sounds good mate

Bargain_Rzl

HOW many bridesmaids???????? ... Seriously, I think the speech is great and I hope you have a lovely wedding

trigger_mike

Thanks!, took until 2AM last night to write it!, i did pinched a few bits from the hitched website which has really helped!.
And yes 6 bridesmaids!! not my choice!

dccarm

Sounds good. Are you sure he's not touchy about the combover though? - I think you'd be better making light of it as it currently sounds more like a dig.