Wedding Speeches

"I would, therefore, like to propose a toast to our children and grandchildren. They don't know this yet, but later on, they're going to be doing the washing up."

I read through loads of the speeches on here, although I ended up trying to steer clear of too many old chestnuts. I felt that I wanted to try and be a bit more personalised, and less generic (also a lot of them are risque and I didn't know the audience too well). Despite knowing better, I ended up only starting to write this about 10days before the wedding date. I printed each paragraph onto a separate page for ease of delivery because at my own wedding I lost my place when I had a wall of text Matt

points to note: The Groom was a bit chubby at school, and has dark blonde, slightly red hair, so of course he was called 'ginger' to which he would always reply "Its Strawberry Blonde!". Alongside my speech I had a powerpoint presentation running showing pictures, and the spoof phone conversation was a part of this, with dial tone etc.. This worked well by pre-recording it, so I didnt have to worry about play acting both parts. I thought about asking someone to role-play with me but didn't want to put anyone under pressure to do so. the presentation was setup with a simple 'congratulations'

My speech was, rather surprisingly, very well received and I was told constantly throughout the night that everyone absolutely loved it! I got most ideas from this site, and thought I'd throw it back on here in case it helps anyone else out on their big day.

"R and I have absolutely no hobbies or interests in common at all! In fact, we're pretty much complete opposites, but who needs stuff in common? It's over-rated!"

I found the speeches of other “fathers of the bride” very useful, in at least one case copying a sentence almost word for word.  I’d be glad to think that others used my speech in the same way

There were two Best Men so the speech was written to be short; it lasted just under 5 minutes with laughs and applause.  Additionally, I didn't know the Bride that well and the Groom did his speech last.

I do a lot of presentations for my job so although the prospect of speaking in front of over 100 people didn't worry me, I'd never given a personal speech before and I found it quite an emotional experience! I was given a 5 minute time limit (as were the best men) but I knew I didn't want to fill that much. This turned out to be about 4 mins, with some omissions and some ad libbing. I'd say if you're speaking at a wedding where there are a lot of children, this speech might be a bit on the long side - there weren't many at this wedding but the smaller ones were getting restless towards the end