I Promise Never To Listen to Another Mother-in-Law Joke Again…

The Speechwriter’s Guide to Preparing a Funny Groom Speech

By Brian Jenner

Published by Brian Jenner at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Brian Jenner

A wedding isn’t for the bride and groom, it’s for the family and friends. The B. and G. are just props, silly stick figures with no more significance than the pink and white candy figures on the top of the cake.

Susan Cheever

About the Author

Brian Jenner was educated at Brasenose College, Oxford. After that he worked as a journalist on the Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail. He has written two humour books, Men and Collections and I’m Just Phoning to Chase My Invoice.

He was a member of Toastmasters International for five years and he has written speeches for top politicians, businessmen and celebrities. He is the founder of the UK Speechwriters' Guild.

If you would like to enquire about his speechwriting services, visit his website, www.thespeechwriter.co.uk.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Task you Face

Organisation

Symbolism

The Delivery

Creative Preparation: How to Get Started

Use your Subconscious Mind

What a Speechwriter Does

Rhythm and Rhetoric

Contrasts

Lists of Three

Images

Gags

Quotations

Anecdotes

Dealing with Nerves

Speech Structure

Composition

Opening Lines

Thanks

Proposing

Stag Do

Essentials

Introducing the Best Man

Fillers

Closing Lines

Finishing Up

Editing

Checklist

Rehearsal

Preparation

The Performance

Sample Speech

Sample speech for Brian on the occasion of his marriage to Felicity

Introduction

For the past ten years I have been writing wedding speeches for a living.

It has been fun. I’ve had conversations with men about their fiancées, their wives, their daughters and their friends, giving me insights into their feelings and their attitudes.

If I was ever in danger of losing confidence in my service, I read copies of the speeches that clients were planning to deliver before I had any input. It’s not at all obvious how to write a good wedding speech.

The groom’s speech is in many ways the hardest wedding speech to write. The best man can make fun of the groom. The father of the bride talks about his daughter.

The groom could mock the best man, but that’s not really what the day is all about. He could tell some self-deprecating jokes, but he doesn’t want the bride to start getting second thoughts. The groom needs to be gracious and reflective. He needs to say a few appropriate words thanking everyone for being part of his special day.

For a speechwriter, every speech is different, but each time you write a script, you get closer to perfection. Perfection is a mixture of the personal and the contrived.

The contrived amounts to the best one-liners, set-up lines and fillers that have a predictable impact: the secret formulae that only someone who writes speeches all the time would bother to collect. The personal is the background information you get from the individual you’re writing the speech for.

This book contains the contrived lines I have picked up along the way and some tools to help you come up with appropriate material. Using this book it’s up to you to personalise that information, and craft your own speech.

The Task you Face

The groom’s speech traditionally comes after the father of the bride, but before the best man. You want to give an original speech, without it being totally experimental. I advise all my clients to speak for seven minutes. Seven minutes is the ideal length for a social speech. We work together on their script then it’s up to the groom to rehearse it. Adopting a sensible performance pace, it takes a minute to read 120 words. That means seven minutes is 840 words.

The task you face is to read out 840 words. Those 840 words, you will have written out and rehearsed over a dozen times. The prospect of doing a wedding speech, when described like that, is hardly daunting. Most nerves come from a fear of what could go wrong. Reading out 840 pre-prepared, familiar words, is not too difficult.

I divide the speech into blocks: a few lines to say thank you to the guests, an opening joke, a line to set up the structure of the speech, some comments on why you both are so well matched, ending up with an emotional statement and the introduction of the best man.

A speech is made up of lots of tiny ideas. It’s like a meal in an expensive restaurant. You don’t just pile on the sausages, potatoes and gravy. You serve up small portions, beautifully presented with sauces and other garnishes. It’s about using subtle flavours, not delivering bulk.

The added advantage of restricting yourself to 840 words is that it provides a creative discipline. It’s like packing your suitcase for the airport; you’ve got to make some tough decisions about what is absolutely necessary to take with you. That focuses the mind and forces you to be succinct and creative.

For me composing a speech is like assembling an Airfix model. After interviewing the client in depth, I collect phrases and sentences which I copy and paste into a document. I then link the phrases together using my own words as the glue.

My clients don’t want me to summarise what they tell me. The former White House speechwriter Robert Orben talks about injecting ‘surprise, relevance and rhythm’ into a speech. Clients want to be supplied with funny or stylish ways of saying things. In speechwriting, we observe the experts and we imitate ideas until they are absorbed into our own personal way of doing things. The groom has to find a way to say what he wants to say in a style he feels comfortable with.

To write this book, I went through all my old speeches looking for the best one-liners, the best anecdotes, and the best way to phrase sentiments that are appropriate to all weddings.

As you read this book, put a small tick against those lines you like. When you’re ready to start writing, you can copy them into your own document to stimulate your imagination, or to use in your script.

Organisation

Thankfully, couples don’t get married very often. For this reason, they’re not aware of the things that can go wrong. The groom needs to take charge of the day. I’ve noticed from attending weddings that speeches can often be a downside to the celebrations rather than an upside.

The biggest mistake is to let the speeches go on too long. Five minutes of smutty jokes is bad, but 25 minutes of aimless reminiscence is worse. If the best man speaks for 15 minutes, the father of the bride for 15 minutes and you speak for 15 minutes that makes 45 minutes of sitting in silence for the guests while they listen to amateur performers.

When you consider that many guests have not seen each other for years. When you consider they’ve got huge amounts to catch up on. When you consider that money is being spent on a band or a disco, you don’t want the wedding to run late, cutting the amount of time available for dancing, and cramping the style of the professional entertainers.

Liaise with your best man and the father of the bride. Agree that you will each speak for seven minutes (840 words). If possible, get someone to introduce each of the speakers―a warm-up man, someone who is confident and has a sense of humour. Better still appoint a professional Toastmaster. Get them to do a 20 second introduction for the father of the bride, the groom and the best man.

I once heard an effective strategy for dealing with a wedding speaker who starts to be offensive or a crashing bore. The groom should stand up, move towards the offending speaker and give him a big bear hug and announce what a loveable character he is. You will be surprised how the audience will appreciate and understand the interruption. You want to minimise your own stress on the day. The groom has to be the chief diplomat, the support to the star of the day, the male lead, the peace maker and many other things, for this reason you want to make the day as straightforward and easy as possible.

Symbolism


Your wedding day is probably the biggest day of your life. It’s worth taking some time to ponder the symbolism of the occasion.

In romantic comedies there is always a conflict between the head and the heart. The male lead is torn between the woman others expect him to marry, and the woman he really loves. How did the drama unfold for you? Maybe there was no drama. Some weddings are an acknowledgment of reality. You begin a relationship and before you know it you’ve got children together or you’ve bought a house together. In that case, consider how life leads some people effortlessly in a certain direction.

How of the 28 million women in Britain did you end up with this woman? How did you meet? How did you know that she was the right one? If you can answer these questions sincerely, you will give a fascinating speech. It’s a good moment in your life to reflect on the mysterious way that things work out.

The Delivery

Learning to speak in public is like learning to dance or play golf. The people who excel practise regularly. It’s great if you have natural confidence, but all that is really required is a determination to learn from your mistakes. At a wedding, the guests are not expecting a stand-up comedian. As long as they can hear you, and you make sense, they will be pleased. They’re rooting for you to do well.

Ten minutes after you sit down, they will have forgotten 80% of what you said. So keep calm and do your best. Even if you feel like jelly, the audience will not be able to see your inner wobbliness. It’s actually quite difficult to spot the signs of nervousness; most people don’t pay particularly close attention.

If you want to get some regular public speaking practice before the day, you can join a public speaking club like those of Toastmasters International or the Association of Speakers Clubs―you can find them all over the world. You may discover that public speaking is a pastime you want to pursue. Then stick at it. It’s a very useful skill to have because if you can make a good wedding speech, you can do a good after dinner speech. If you can do a good after dinner speech, you can make a good memorial speech. If you can do a good memorial speech, you can do a keynote presentation at a conference. You will be much appreciated by clubs and societies, friends, family and your work colleagues.

Do stand up to deliver your speech―this may seem like an obvious point but I have seen many ‘seated’ speakers who could neither be seen nor heard.

Standing up also enables you to project your voice and make better use of body-language.

Creative Preparation: How to Get Started

For many grooms, the hardest part is getting started. Whenever someone books me to write a speech for them, I make an appointment with them to do an interview.