Sister of the Groom Speech

Over the years, wedding traditions are progressed to more accurately reflect the world we live in, and long may that continue. The days of Alpha Male best man speeches, are thankfully disappearing into the distance, and in their place you’re much more likely to find warmer, more entertaining, and less humiliating speeches. Just as the quality and content of the speeches is changing, so too are the list of people who might give them, and that brings us to the sister of the groom speech.

Many grooms share a very close and special bond with their sister, and nothing crowns that relationship better than giving her the opportunity to speak at the wedding. Sometimes this will be in place of the best man, sometimes this will be an additional speech in the line up. From the perspective of the guests, I would always give the sister of the groom speech instead of the best man. For one thing, having multiple speeches about the same person is a little self obsessed, and it also really starts to rack up the time spent on speeches.

Things to remember for a sister of the groom speech

Engaging

This needs to be an engaging, entertaining and meaningful speech in equal measure. This is your opportunity to celebrate your brother from a unique perspective, so it should be a story of the boy you grew up with, to the man he is today.

Sentiment

This is obviously a really powerful element to the speech. Underlining what a great guy he is and what he means to you and others, needs to be achieved in the most memorable way possible. So, avoid clichés, and tired quotations, and instead tell it from the heart using memories and stories to give everyone a flavour of the bond you share.

humor

Without humor, there will be no balance to the speech, and it will simply become one big wave of emotion, which will be difficult to get through for both you, and the guests. The humor should be genuinely funny, warm and inclusive – there should be nothing private or confusing in what you’re saying. Also try to avoid anything too embarrassing, this shouldn’t be an exercise in public humiliation, despite the overwhelming temptation!

Length

This all depends on how many speakers there are, but keep in mind that the length of the speech is crucial to its success. If the sister of the groom speech is replacing the best man speech, and there are a total of 3 speakers, then your speech should be about 1300 words. For every additional speaker in the line up, remove around 200 words from that total.

Parents

Unlike the best man speech, the sister of the groom speech should include something about your parents. This can be a simple sentence or two as to how great they’ve been, but don’t forget that the groom will be mentioning them, so you should avoid going into any great detail. I would also avoid any toast to the parents, as again, this is the groom’s territory.

The Bride

You can really emphasise here how great the bride has been for your brother, and how happy you are to have such an amazing new sister in law. Sisters of the groom usually aren’t asked to make a speech if they have challenging relationships with the bride, but if that is the case, keep it as upbeat and positive as possible.

Delivering Your Speech

Having a great speech is one thing, getting the delivery just right is where it can all come undone, if you’re not adequately prepared. Here are my thoughts on the three most common types of delivery method.

Reading From a Sheet

This may sound amateurish and to be avoided, but if done correctly, it can be the safest and most efficient way of delivering a speech. Get to know the speech by reading at every opportunity, and that way it will cement itself in your brain. Don’t try to memorise it or you will go mad. Print the speech out in an extremely large font, and use that as a prompt on the day, remembering to speak slowly, pause often, and have as much eye contact as possible. Your hands will be shaky, so rest the sheets on a folder, book or lectern.

Cue Cards

These are a very popular method for delivering a speech, but I’ve never been very keen on them. The idea is that you summarise the speech in bullet point form on to cards, and then use them as a prompt on the day. The problem is the words are in such a tiny form it can all be a bit fiddly to read on the day, and whole chunks of text, are often missed.

Memorise the Speech

Memorising the speech is the holy grail of wedding speakers, and can generally only be achieved by those who have either set themselves the task months in advance, or who use this sort of skill on a regular basis. If this is how you’d like to present the speech, then be realistic about how much free time you have in a week. If it’s just a few hours, then start as early as possible – 6 months in advance is not a ridiculous time frame. The main issue with this method is that you can be so focussed on remembering what comes next, that the delivery can be a little wooden, but practice should iron that out.