Dedication to FallingSideways
Suzan St Maur has written literally hundreds of speeches for a wide variety of speakers from "captains of industry" to famous actors to private individuals making speeches at weddings, bar mitzvahs and other important family celebrations. She coaches speakers in presentation techniques, and writes jokes for some well-known UK TV personalities.
To ‘FallingSideways’
The brilliant rock band created by my son Tom and his friends Jackson, James and Oli, whose practice sessions serenaded me on many occasions while I was writing this book. (And don’t forget to try to squeeze in some schoolwork.)
http://www.fallingsideways.org
Canadian-born Suzan St Maur has been a professional writer for more years than she cares to admit to. Although she started out working as a journalist and an advertising copywriter, during the 1990s and into the new millennium she became well-known as one of the UK’s leading business speechwriters. She has written words for many of the UK’s captains of industry, plus politicians, TV personalities, actors and more.
Having become a familiar name in business speechwriting Suze (as everyone calls her) began getting requests to turn her hand to writing cabaret scripts and social speeches, in addition to the business material. Attacking these projects with gusto, she then gained a reputation as quite a useful comedy/social speechwriter in addition to the accolades she received in the business world.
Apart from the speechwriting Suze runs a successful business writing and coaching consultancy, as well as having written a number of books (on consumer, business and humour topics) of which this is number 13 - not ominous, we hope!
Suze lives in a village near Milton Keynes, central England, with her teenage son Tom and various dogs and cats. For more information on Suze check out her website here:
Other books by Suzan St Maur
The Jewellery Book (with Norbert Streep) (Magnum)
The Home Safety Book (Jill Norman Books)
The A to Z of Video and AV Jargon (Routledge)
Writing Words That Sell (with John Butman) (Management Books, 2000)
Writing Your Own Scripts and Speeches (McGraw Hill)
The Horse Lover’s Joke Book (Kenilworth Press)
Powerwriting: the hidden skills you need to transform your business writing (Prentice Hall Business)
Canine Capers: over 350 jokes to make your tail wag (Kenilworth Press)
The Food Lover’s Joke Book(ItsCooking.com)
Get Yourself Published (LeanMarketing Press)
The MAMBA way to make your words sell (LeanMarketing Press)
The Easy Way To Be Brilliant At Business Writing (LeanMarketing Press)
Successful Business Writing In English (with Frances Gordon) (LeanMarketing Press, due 2006)
There are so many people I want to thank that I think the only fair way is to list them alphabetically:
Anya
Caroline Lashley
Christine Knott
Dawn Charles
Debbie Jenkins
Elizabeth Lorkins
Evelyn and Phillip Khan-Panni
Gail Cornish
Helen Parkinson
Jo Parfitt
Joan McFarlane
John Bowden
Julie Lacey
Kenilworth Press
Lesley Chapman
Maja Pawinska Sims
Nikki Read and Giles Lewis
Philip Calvert
Sharon Thornton
(Dr) Simon Raybould
Tom Webb
...plus all the staff and patients at the Milton Keynes Macmillan Oncology Unit, whom I bored rigid with stories about ‘my book’ every three weeks.
Thank you all for your help, contributions and support.
Hello and welcome to Wedding Speeches For Women - as far as we know, the first contemporary book on that topic to be published in the UK.
Although it‘s quite common at the moment for ‘the bride to get up and say a few words as well’, there’s a big difference between that and at least an equal share of the most important speeches being given by not only the bride, but also the maid or matron of honour, the bride’s or groom’s mother, grandmother, aunt, daughter, god-daughter, best friend or anyone else of a female persuasion. Yet that’s the direction in which society is moving now.
Of course there are many good books in existence which tell the men how to make their speeches, and you’ll probably find some useful pointers if you have a look at those too (see Resources, page 201). But books for the men aren’t enough for us women, for two reasons.
One, the men tend usually to make the same, traditional speeches in which they must observe conventions and say what’s expected of them. We girls, having been ignored in the days when those traditions and conventions were established, are now delightfully free from such restrictions. So we can pretty well say what we like.
Two, whether the arch-feminists like it or not, there is a difference in appropriate presentation styles between men and women. Men might get away with being a little naughty or smutty in a wedding speech, but coming from a woman it usually sounds tacky and cheap. We girls need to be cleverer and subtler - which shouldn’t be hard, considering our infinitely superior brains!
Anyway, in this book I have shared all my own speechwriting skills (see my author bio for details of those) and I have also enlisted the help of a number of women who have made wedding speeches themselves. You can share their contributions in the pages that follow.
I hope the book will give you all the help you need to make the starring speech at your wedding or that of your relative or friend. Please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions about the book’s contents, or anything else that might be concerning you about your speech - suze@suzanstmaur.com - and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
I wish you happy reading and happy speech-making!
