Making Your Wedding Speech Original

My previous article focused on the importance of making your wedding speech relevant. Being relevant will help you convince your wedding guests to listen for a while, but it isn’t enough on its own to hook them in. So, once you have decided what your main theme is going to be, you need to wrap it in an original way.

Don’t worry, this doesn’t mean you need to wear a bizarre costume, Morris dance or sing, but whatever the type of wedding you are speaking at, you need to convince your audience that they are going to hear something new from you.  The best way to do that is to communicate a little differently.

There’s obviously a catch here.  If I give you an original idea then it will immediately cease to be original, but I can give you a couple of examples of people who have managed to present relevant ideas in ways that have really made an impact on the audiences concerned.

Like the example of the accountant given fifteen minutes to speak on the difference between tax evasion and avoidance.  This is obviously a technical issue with major consequences.  Avoidance leaves more money sitting in your personal account, evasion gains you a stretch behind bars, and so she started by telling a story about life in Ford Open Prison.  Her audience were captivated, and their interest grew when she explained that was exactly what they could be facing if they failed to listen to some of the finer details that were to follow.

Then there was a father-of-the-bride at a recent wedding.  His speech was relevant enough, but it just lacked a little bite.  Until he mentioned that his daughter had spent the first twenty years of her life obsessed with the musical Grease.  As a result, he wove together the key stories and characters from her life using song titles and lyrics sung by John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.  The following week he and his wife started receiving thank you letters for the wedding, and the vast majority referred to his speech as being the best they had ever heard.

These examples are obviously pretty random.  There is, sadly, no formula for originality.  It disappears the minute you try to adhere to a template, and that’s why every speech I write begins on a blank piece of paper.

If you can combine a relevant approach with an original way of communicating the message then you are on well on track.

Please feel free to call me on +44 20 8245 8999 to discuss the impact of your speech in more detail.

Best wishes, Lawrence

Article by Wedding Speech Writing Specialist Lawrence Bernstein

Image Courtesy of Jamie Penfold Photography

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