Wedding Speech Order

There are many things that are important when it comes to the big day, but knowing the wedding speech order, is absolutely critical to the success of all the speeches. If you know who is speaking, and in what sequence, then you can judge what material to use in your speech, what your hand over from the previous speaker should be, and what your parting shot at the end should look like. There used to be hard and fast tradition that made the wedding speech order almost set in stone, but things are changing, and it also depends on where you live.

In America they tended to follow the British wedding speech order, and to some extent still do, however, the advent of the rehearsal dinner has thrown a spanner into the works, because how many people need or want to speak twice in a weekend? It’s not uncommon for the father of the bride to speak at the rehearsal dinner, and not on the wedding day itself, the groom would always speak on the big day, and depending on which day the best man speech is given, you’ll then find a sibling or another good friend making a similar speech on the alternate day. If you are making 2 speeches at the wedding, you need to make them as different as possible; so maybe divide up the stories and topics, and split into two drafts where they work best with each other.

As yet, the British haven’t adopted the rehearsal dinner approach, so there’s no confusion as to what day you’re going to be on, however, the number of potential speakers has increased dramatically. Mothers of the groom, fathers of the groom, bridesmaids, maid of honor, mother of the bride, and the bride herself, are now much more likely to have a speech to make.