Calm your nerves you have an excellent speech ahead | Wedition's unique wedding speech guide

Giving a speech at your wedding is a fantastic way to show your love and gratitude to your wedding party, your guests and of course your spouse. But wedding speeches can be a daunting task even for the most practised public speaker because your emotions are running on high. Whether you plan to make a speech as the groom or the bride, take a look at our top tips for settling your nerves, crafting and delivering a wedding speech that brings your love story to life.

• Keep it brief, remember your guests have lots of speeches to listen to.
• The shorter your wedding speech is the more memorable it will be.
• Open your wedding speech with a simple statement or nod of gratitude to your wedding guests.
• Make your wedding speech unique by sharing memories and stories about your wedding party as this will really help bring your wedding story to life for your guests.
• End your speech with a toast!

Be brief and memorable

Although you will without a doubt have a lot of things you’d like to share with your guests, remember that they will be listening to a lot of speeches today. The main thing is to keep it simple and cover a lot of ground in the briefest manner possible. You don’t want your speech to sound like a shopping list or an anxious rabble of ideas, so planning the speech ahead of time helps you create a structure to follow on your special day.

Have a strong opener

Make a fun joke to your father-in law or spouse (depending on whether you both plan to make a speech) or a simple thank you and show of gratitude towards your new in-laws for welcoming you to the family. Be sure also to offer a thank you to everyone who has attended your wedding and has helped make your celebrations so special. Whenever you do offer thank you’s say them on behalf of yourself and your spouse ‘my wife and I’ or ‘my husband and I’ is guaranteed to raise a cheer from your family and friends.

Share memories and demonstrate gratitude

Demonstrate a balance of sincerity and humour when sharing heartfelt memories of your family reminding them how valued their love and support has been to you throughout your life. Your wedding party are often made up of close friends that have been with you throughout your life so be sure in your unique wedding speech to take a few moments to thank them for their support, whether it be organising your hen party or stag do, helping you choose an outfit or simply listening to you vent about your pre-wedding stress. Your wedding speech is a great opportunity to share your favourite childhood memories that you have with your siblings or a special memory that you cherish from your relationship with your spouse.

Be humorous

Now is the time to share a few jokes about your best man in this light-hearted section of your speech you can choose a few (clean) stories that highlight your friendship, it's also a fun opportunity to joke about the upcoming best man’s speech. Just be careful that you don’t spend more time talking about the best man than your spouse.

For a truly unique wedding speech you could arrange a flash mob to start singing during your speech. Wedition bride Amy, arranged a surprise of singing waiters for her groom Michael, when it was his turn to make a speech!

Make it personal

Often sadly not everyone you would like to share your special day can make it and you may have lost loved ones who you would like to make a special mention of and take time to remember. No wedding speech would be complete without a special heartfelt mention of your spouse. Now is your chance to bring your love story alive for your guests, share the story of how you first met and tell your guests about a cherished memory you have, before thanking your spouse for their continued love and support. An easy way to do this is to address this part of your unique wedding speech directly to your spouse, complement their appearance, when you realised you were in love and then of course mention your future together.

End on a high

You want to end on a strong point so why not create a toast to your new spouse as the perfect way to round off your speech or end with a joke about how relived you are to have finished the wedding speech! You may be nervous but remember to breath, don’t try too hard to be funny, practise it in front of a mirror or ask someone else to read through it for you. Consider doing the wedding speeches before you sit down to eat so that you can enjoy your meal without feeling worried or nervous and whatever happens remember you are in a room full of the people who love you the most in the world, so really you have nothing to worry about.

Compliment your unique wedding speech with Wedition

You might choose to include a special message or choose a book passage to dedicate to your spouse as an article within Wedition, your personalised wedding magazine. Wedition couple Claire and Jay decided to write a bio for each other that we kept as a surprise for them to read on their wedding day.

Bring your wedding story to life for your guests with a unique memento of your special day that your guests can cherish forever. Contact Liz to arrange your Discovery Session and subscribe to the Wedition newsletter to receive exciting tips and ideas to start your exciting wedding journey.