Groom speech - don't forget it's forever

I’ve written many times that there is an underlying temptation for grooms out there to see the groom speech as ‘just a groom speech’. In other words, it’s a fairly routine meander through loved ones, a toast here and there, and some lovely words about your brand new wife. Don’t worry about entertainment, humour or creativity, that’s for the best man. Wrong. Really wrong.

Unless you make this a speech that guests want to listen to, and that means entertaining them, then it becomes dull, tedious, meaningless speech. Not putting the effort into making this speech as amazing as it should be, is to take your audience for granted, and that’s not good enough. Everyone will have done their bit, time and money wise, to be there for your big day, and to not acknowledge that with a really great speech, is really missing the mark. However, there is slightly more to it, and that’s the not insignificant fact that this speech will be with you for the rest of your days.

Yes, not only are you committing yourself to someone for all eternity, you’re also committing what you say all eternity too, so to be succinct: it had better be good. The last position you want to be in, is to wish you’d done a better job, remembered to talk about the people you forgot, hadn’t talked about yourself so much, and quite frankly been a lot less boring. When you’re writing this speech, if you bear in mind that in 20 years time, people will remember what you said, then that’s an indication of how seriously you should take it. It doesn’t have to be War and Peace, but at the same time, the back of a cigarette packet isn’t going to work either. You spend a fortune on the food and drink, and months deliberating over the menu, and a year later nobody will have a clue what they ate or drank.

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