Wedding Speech - What You Should Not Say
66Gauge Your Audience
Your audience at the wedding will be very diverse, from very young to very old, coming from many different places and having their own unique relationships with the Bride and Groom. A wedding speaker needs to strike a balance between being funny, while not causing offense to any of the wedding guests and not crossing the line into bad taste.
Some speakers can naturally get away with crossing the boundaries so it requires you identify what you are comfortable with and recognise how your audience may react to what you say.
To gain an outside perspective you may want to run your speech by a few people beforehand to gauge their reactions. You may wish to run the speech by the Mother of the bride, if she is happy with the speech you can be reasonably assured that the speech has the correct balance and will not cause offense.
Strictly Off Limits
- Religion Or Race
- Expletive Language or Crude Sexual References
- Former Partners
- Threats to Call Off the Wedding
- People who have refused to attend the wedding.
It can be difficult to write a speech when having so many factor to consider when doing so.
A good paper exercise is to write down whatever comes into your head when thinking about the wedding speech, don't think just write. Then return to you scribblings later and review, select and reject the unsuitable material.
A simple question to ask yourself would be "Do i want to hear this at a wedding?"
The Next Steps
- Wedding Speech Success
Want to Deliver a Professional, inspiring and funny Wedding Speech? We have the Tools and the Guidance to help you do that.
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This is good rpactiocal advice for anyone in this position. I have to wonder are any of your examples draw from movies where the "off limits" categories was exploited for cheap laughs?
@Dobson. Thank you for your comments, I know many people who gauge what is allowed by what some actors can get away with in movies. Unfortunately, the grandparents at real life weddings do not appear to react the same way as the guests in said movies. If you know your audience well and the Bride and Groom, you can tailor your speech to be funny without overstepping any boundaries.
Betty Reid 2 years ago
I think religion is okay sometimes, for example, if the bride and groom are religious. I totally agree on the former partners though. Someone mentioned that at my brother's rehearsal dinner. Everyone knew he'd been single a long time, but it kind of made me cringed anyway.