How to give a long-winded wedding toast
Have you ever attended a wedding where the toast went on and on and on? Most of us have. It is painful to watch. So how do you give a long-winded wedding toast? You don’t.
They’re hard to pull off. Believe me, you never want to flub a toast, because as Paul Dickson said in his book, “Rising to the Occasion”:
“Flubbing the toast is like serving stale champagne: it flattens the mood.”
Long-winded wedding toasts meander off track. Often, speakers lose track of where they are and where they are going. Ad-libs fall flat and often veer into cringe-worthy moments of utter embarrassment and humiliation.
You’re much better to keep it short, like this father of the bride did in his 115 second toast:
We encourage you to provide your event’s toasters with the following guidelines as provided by Toastmasters International.
- Keep it short and sweet. It is important to get to the point and make people smile. A few minutes is all you need.
- Be careful with humor. Avoid the risque. Under no circumstances should you embarrass the person being toasted.
- Practice. At the very least, jot down a brief outline of what you want to say. If you’re prone to nervousness, you might want to script your toast and time it.
Simple. The thing about long-winded wedding toasts is that they need to be impeccably crafted. They need months of practice and memorization to be totally professional.
When you keep it short and sweet, your ideas are easy to remember so you can deliver them with just a few notes. Sometimes, a good wedding toast can be simply built around a great quote, like this beauty from Homer’s Odyssey:
“There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.”
Follow Toastmaster’s advice. Keep you wedding toast short and sweet, and watch how it delights the wedding couple. A long-winded wedding toast won’t. It’s that simple.
Do you know what else is simple? The wedding entertainment, when it is provided by Five Star Entertainment. We know how to pack the dance floor and create and event defined by fun. Check out our availability today.