SPEAK EASY
Making a speech? Take a deep breath (and don’t mention the ex)
GIVING a good speech at a wedding doesn’t have to be scary. If you are on the hook for an upcoming wedding, a bit of preparation will make sure you don’t spend the first half of the event in stomach-knotted horror.
Experts agree on a few things: Keep it short, keep it clean, keep it light, make it heartfelt and, the hardest one of all, make it original.
A good speech should have some general naming and thanking, and two real-life stories (one funny, one touching), followed by some heartfelt wishes and a toast.
Five minutes is often the recommended time for giving a wedding speech, but that’s just for the absolutely tongue-tied and terrified. You can’t say much about someone you love in five minutes. That’s barely enough time to thank and flatter everyone and tell one anecdote.
In a traditional wedding, the key speechmakers are the groom, the bride’s father and the best man. The bride and the matron of honor might also get in on the game.
Unless time is short — you’re getting married on a fire-spewing robot ostrich at Burning Man or you’ve rented a major museum — give yourself at least 10 minutes. People want to relax and be entertained, and they want to learn about the strange family they’re merging ng with.
Be funny without being tacky, skeezy or overly salty. The raunchy stuff should be put to rest at the bachelor/ette party. It’s bad tastee to talk about sex, exes and felonies. This is not ot stand-up — you’re playing to grandma and thehe flower girls. Talk about how the couple met, tell a story about why they are a great friend, marrying down, too bad. Button it and try to be gracious.
It’s OK to read other people’s speeches online to get a sense of what they could say, but don’t just lift it straight.
Photo slide shows are good as long as they move along at a clip. PowerPoint is never good at weddings. It reminds people of office work.
If you anticipate being nervous to the point of feeling sick, enlist a friend to coach you in deep breathing for a minute before you go on. It really helps. Dutch courage can be overdone, so save the drinking for after you’ve done your duty.
Positive body language can help you, too. Yana German trained as a ballerina in Belarus before moving to Chicago, where she coached models on how to walk the runway. She is now a body language expert and consultant.
She believes a speech can be a huge success if the person delivering it is mindful of how they hold their body.
“For some, public speaking is worse than death,” she says. “I had a lady who turned purple. [People] freak out because of what other people will think. But if we know that we’ve got it, [listeners] will feel good because we will feel good.”