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Okay men, here's an article for you for a change and it's got to do with your speech.
Follow what I have to say here and you'll have a lot of guests come up to you on your wedding day and pat you on the back. Look, like it or not, you have to make a speech. And since it's your first real duty as a husband, you may as well go full tilt and do a really good job.
In the process, you will be hailed and revered as a hero, which is a pretty good feeling at your own wedding. So go for gold, hit the ball out of the park and you won't regret it. I'm not going to tell you what to say, but rather I'm going to give you a push and a shove in the right direction so that you go into preparing your speech in the correct manner. Here goes:
Rule 1: Open a beer and loosen up brother.
Seriously hey, don't take yourself too seriously. Your wedding speech should be you speaking. So make it sound like you.
If you battle expressing yourself in writing, then record bits and pieces of your speech into your cell phone for a few weeks before your wedding. You can type the various parts out later and neaten them up into a coherent masterpiece.
Rule 2: Give yourself time.
A nervous groom chain-smoking between bouts of vomiting in the bushes because of a poorly prepared wedding speech (yes, it happens) is not a pretty sight. So give yourself time to prepare your speech. As a rule-of-thumb you need to have it done at least a week before your wedding.
Trust me, the last 7 days before your wedding are going to have you preoccupied with a lot of other things. Have your speech nailed down in good time and all you'll need to do is go over it here and there to keep it fresh in your mind (and sounding like you).
Rule 3: Open another beer, then write this down Batman.
No dirty jokes. No swearing. No reference to previous girlfriends, boyfriends or flings. Keep it tidy. Be polite to your wife, guests, your parents and uh-oh, your new parents-in-law. This is one time that you really don't want to cock things up and piss off the guy you now have to call 'Dad.'
So going into any sort of detail about what's going to happen later in the honeymoon suite should be left until you actually get there (unless you want to carry your wife over the threshold with a black eye and a broken nose). Oh, and try to avoid searching for material on the Internet because chances are, we've all heard it before. Keep your speech relevant to you and your new wife and it'll be fresh, interesting and outstanding, no sweat.
Rule 4: Be proud, be a hero.
This is the very first time that you will ever be able to get up in a room full of your closest family and friends and talk about your new wife.
Go big! Right here, right now, you are the most important man in her life – you are her hero. Nothing else matters. She has waited for this day ever since she was a little girl – she was made for this day. So be her hero, because you damned well are!
Now is your chance to show everyone, but most importantly her, that you are the man she always wanted to marry. The line: 'your bum really fills that dress out beautifully' is incorrect. Try not to use it if at all possible. Well, I suppose you could, but you won't get lucky later on that's for sure.
Rule 5: Show courage big guy.
I judge speeches on 2 things – how much I laugh, and how many goose-bumps I get. If you can deliver both, you win.
Making people laugh is actually easy. Tell a true-life story, throw in a friend or two sitting in the audience, and bingo – laughter. Choking up with emotion and letting it all flow is more difficult. But when it comes naturally and with deep, heartfelt meaning, it brings goose-bumps.
And there's nothing cooler than when laughter and goose-bumps collide. So show the courage to speak your mind and wear your heart on your sleeve. People love it.
Rule 6: Open a beer.
That's it. Job done. Cheers mate.
Warren Williams is a specialist wedding and portrait photographer. See more of his columns on here
and follow him on Twitter here
Do you remeber the speech your husband made on your wedding day? Tell us about it!
