To create a memorable wedding speech requires excitement, empathy, warmth, enthusiasm ... and flair. Flair is the sizzle in the sausage.

Having something worthwhile to say is never enough. You need to know how to use words and images to reach your audience’s minds and hearts. Your speech needs a touch of flair. Flair is partly intuition – which comes from experience, imagination and a willingness to think – and a careful study of this chapter!

Every communication is an opportunity to throw a bridge across a void. If you can do this, your speech will have more effect than you could ever have believed possible. When we face an important interview, we prepare ourselves to make the best possible impression. We look good. So, when we are about to meet an audience, we should polish our words as well as our shoes. We should sound good.

Today people’s expectations are high and their attention spans are low. Merely to gain and hold an audience’s attention requires flair. If you want to keep them interested, your speech must sparkle. So let’s get polishing.

1 Preparing your script

The best talkers are those who are most natural. They are easy, fluent, friendly and amusing. No script for them. How could there be? They are talking only to us and basing what they say on our reactions as they go along. For most of us, however, that sort of performance is an aspiration rather than a description. Our tongues are not so honeyed and our words are less winged. We need a script.

But what sort of script? Cards? Notes? Speech written out in full? It’s up to you. There is no right way of doing it. Here is a simple method favoured by many speakers:

• Write the speech out in full.
• Memorise the opening and closing lines and familiarise yourself with the remainder of the speech.
• Summarise the speech on one card, or one sheet of paper using key words to remind you of your sequence of anecdotes, quotations, jokes and so on.

2 Using words to be said, not read

Most people can write something to be read, few can write something to be said. Indeed, most people are unaware that there is even a difference.

We are used to writing things to be read: by our friends, our relatives, our bosses, our subordinates. Such everyday written communication is known as text. What we are not used to doing is speaking our written words out loud. Writing intended to be spoken and heard is known as script.

Every effective speaker must recognise that there are very important differences between text and script, namely:

Therefore, you must prepare a speech for an audience which cannot listen at its own pace; which cannot ask you to repeat parts it did not hear or understand; and which cannot choose the order in which to consider your words.

Consider how the same sentiment might be conveyed by a writer, first using text and then script:

Text:

The meaning of marriage is not to be found in church services, or in romantic novels or films. We have no right to expect a happy ending. The meaning of marriage is to be found in all the effort that is required to make a marriage succeed. You need to get to know your partner, and thereby to get to know yourself.

Script:

The meaning of marriage isn’t to be found in wedding bells ... it isn’t the stuff of Mills and Boon romances ... there is no happy ever after. No, the meaning of marriage is in the trying and it’s about learning about someone else ... and through that learning about yourself.’

The lesson is clear: speak your words out loud before you commit them to paper. You will find that each element, each phrase, each sentence, will be built from what has gone before. Instinctively, you will take your listeners from the known to the unknown; from the general to the particular; from the present to the future.

3 Adding a sparkle to your speech

• Paint word pictures: merely listening to a wordy description, however enthusiastically delivered, is a yawn. Watching a story unfold before your eyes, on the other hand, is dramatic and memorable. The characters move. The scenes are in colour. The whole thing has life. The best writers of today know they must use specific detail to paint word pictures. This comes from Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg:

‘I was in Costa’s Chocolate Shop in Owatonna, Minnesota. My friend sat opposite me. We’d just finished Greek salads and were writing in our notebooks for half an hour among glasses of water, a half-sipped coke, and a cup of coffee with milk. The booths were orange, and near the front counter were lines of cream candies dipped in chocolate. Across the street was the Owatonna Bank, designed by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s teacher. Inside the bank was a large cow mural and beautiful stained-glass windows.’

• Use figurative language: try to make your speech colourful and original. Similes and metaphors are particularly useful devices. A simile is a figure of speech, usually introduced by like or as, that compares one thing to another:

‘A face like a mixed grill.’

‘As soft as primroses.’

Because a simile’s function is comparison, it is not as evocative as a metaphor. A metaphor does not so much compare as transform one thing to another. It is more subtle and revealing, stimulating imagery beyond the original transformation:

‘Marriage. Ever since humans gathered together they -we – have displayed a basic instinct for becoming couples. Your man and your woman. Your Romeo and your Juliet. Your yin and youryang. It’s as natural as his and her bath towels. If the life of humankind were music it would be all duets. It’s been a bit of a musical day one way and another. Violins in harmony with cellos. (Daughter) in harmony with (son-in-law). The past in harmony with the future. And, as the Bard of Avon put it: “If music be the food of love, play on”.’

Another useful figure of speech is hyperbole, or deliberately overstating your argument. In a wedding speech you can get away with saying things that most people would find embarrassing and even crass in everyday conversation:

‘You are the best daughter in the world.’

4 Remembering rhythm

A good speech should attract and hold listeners as a magnet attracts and holds iron filings. Here are a few more techniques that will grab your audience and add an almost magical, melodic quality to your speech:

• The rule of three: three is a magic number. People love to hear speakers talk to the beat of three. The effect of three words, three phrases or three sentences is powerful and memorable:

‘Marriage is the meeting of two minds ... of two hearts ... of two souls.’

‘May you be blessed with happiness that grows ... with love that deepens ... and with peace that endures.’

‘I wish you fun and excitement for today ... hopes and dreams for tomorrow ... and love and happiness forever.’

• Parallel sentences: sentences that are parallel add a rhythmic beauty that helps an audience anticipate and follow your thoughts.

‘Marriage is a celebration of love. Marriage is a celebration of life. Marriage is a celebration of joy.’

• Alliteration: the repetition of sounds and syllables, usually at the beginning of words, can help create just the right mood. Your speech will become special and spellbinding:

‘Water your garden with friendship and faith and favour. And then watch it grow. You deserve a garden of love.’

5 Keeping it flowing

Have you noticed how entertainers, politicians and TV presenters move easily and unobstrusively from one topic to another? Like them, you can make your speech flow smoothly and gracefully from beginning to end by making use of a few of these simple devices:

• A bridge is a word that alerts an audience that you are changing direction or moving to a new thought:

’(Daughter) took a job in London. Meanwhile other developments were taking place ...’

• A trigger is a repetition of the same word or phrase to link one topic with another:

That was what (daughter) was like at school. Now I’ll tell you what she was like at college...’

• A rhetorical question is a question which you ask – and answer:

‘That’s what makes our marriage so happy. So what advice can I offer to the newlyweds? ...’

Some members of the audience may know both the bride and the bridegroom very well, while others may only know one of them. Asking a rhetorical question is an excellent way of telling people something while not insulting the intelligence of those already in the know:

‘What can I tell you about a girl who won the school prize for geography, represented the county at netball and passed her driving test ... at the sixth attempt?’

• A flashback is a sudden shift to the past to break what seems to be a predictable narrative:

‘They first met in ...’

‘They both worked for ...’

‘They started going out together when ...’ (yawn, yawn!)

It would have been far more interesting to have provided an unexpected flashback link, such as:

‘Today she’s the confident, woman-about-town you see before you. But five years ago she wasn’t like that ...’

• A list is a very simple way of combining apparently unrelated incidents:

‘I remember three occasions when (daughter) got into trouble at school ...’

But don’t rely too heavily on lists because a catalogue of events soon becomes extremely tedious to listen to.

• A pause is a non-verbal way of showing your audience that you have finished one section of your speech and are about to move on to another.
• A physical movement is another non-verbal signal that you are moving on to something new. If you turn to your daughter, the guests will know that you are going to talk to her, or about her.
• A quotation, joke or story can also serve as an excellent link. Here a man-on-the-bus gag links a personal compliment about your daughter’s good manners with a more general observation that everyone has played their part in making this a day to remember.

‘(Daughter) always shows good old-fashioned courtesy to her fellow human beings. A rare attribute today, I’m sure you’ll agree. When she was on the bus last week she stood up to give an elderly gentleman her seat. He was so surprised he fainted. When he came round he said ‘Thank you’ and (daughter) fainted. Well I’m delighted to say there has been absolutely no shortage of courtesy here today. Things could not have gone better ...’