There comes a time in every man's life when the dreaded speech preparation and delivery has to be dealt with - it will happen when you get married, if you are the father of the bride or one of the unlucky gaggle of best friends who get picked for duty at a wedding.
The problem is you have to deliver a very diplomatic speech which will tickle everyone and offend no-one, which is suitable for children's ears and still engages the grown-ups and which may test your friendship and relationship with the bride, groom, family and significant others but is definitely not supposed to break it.
The best rule is to try to keep it clean - ribaldry is fine, but smut is not!
You can start sketching out your speech around a few short jokes - try this:
Q. Do you think marriage is a lottery?
A. No - with a lottery you stand a small chance!
Clean and humorous and no-one is realistically going to get upset or have their feelings hurt.
It's probably best to stay away from something like, "Marriage is the chief cause of divorce", that is too close to the bone and especially with many of the wedding party already having gone through a divorce and with divorce rates so high.
Some one-liners from history are usually a good way to liven up your speech to, try these:
"The best way to get most husbands to do something is to suggest that perhaps they're too old to do it."
- Ann Bancroft
"I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They've experienced pain and bought jewellery."
- Rita Rudner
"By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher."
- Socrates
"I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury."
- George Burns
Just make sure that you are even handed in your use of such quips - if a one-liner takes a swipe at husbands, make sure there is a counter-balancing quip at the expense of wives.
One-liners are great to drop into a speech but sometimes you need something more detailed. One technique is to take an existing story and weave the bride or groom into the tale as participating characters. If you don't feel comfortable with doing this, try personalizing a story using someone everyone is familiar with, even if the people involved are not directly know by the ensemble, say your old school teacher.
For instance:
"I remember meeting Mrs Smith, our old maths teacher, years after leaving school at a cocktail party. I said "Hi" and we started talking until I noticed she had her wedding ring on the wrong finger - when I asked her why she had the ring on the wrong finger she told me it was because she'd married the wrong man!"
Or you can poke fun at yourself:
"I married Miss Right, but I didn't know her first name was Always"
There are of course mother-in-law jokes, but given the proximity of two of them to the bride and groom, great tact and care needs to be exercised, but just in case you need one, here it is:
"Behind every successful man is a stunned mother-in-law!"
Lawrence Reaves writes for a leading authority on wedding rings, diamond rings and fine jewelry. Danforth Diamond provides wisdom and advice to help you choose the right ring at the right price. Visit DanforthDiamond.com or call 877.404.RING
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