Once you accept that you can approach your wedding speech in exactly the same way as you approach informal communication, your apprehension will dwindle and your confidence will soar

These goals may sound glaringly obvious, yet few public speakers even consider them.

This chapter will not put you in a straitjacket of artificial presentation techniques. You will not be told how to stand, how to gesticulate, how to look at people, how to talk. In everyday life you have no trouble with any of these skills, and the combinations in which you use them make up your personality.

If you abandon everything that is natural to you and substitute ‘acquired’ mannerisms, is it really surprising that you will come over as unnatural, awkward and insincere?

Whatever individual characteristics you have that are special to you should be nurtured and cultivated and worked on, for it is these personal and unique quirks of appearance, personality and expression that will mark you out as a speaker with something different to offer. And that is never a bad thing.

1 Being conversational

When you are sitting leisurely, with family, friends or colleagues, your conversation will be naturally relaxed and chatty, because that is the language of easy communication. When you make a speech, the words and phrases you use should be more considered, imaginative, creative and rhythmical than your everyday language, yet the way you say them, the way you deliver your speech should remain unaffectedly relaxed and chatty.

If you are different when you make a speech in public, you may be perceived as phoney, boring, or lacking in personality. As a result, people will not take to you and they certainly will not be convinced by, or remember, much of what you have to say.

Certainly you may need to speak a little louder or make other concessions to accommodate the needs of your audience, but, in essence, nothing in your delivery style should change. You should be yourself made large.

You need to recognise, and then capture this normal style of communication and make it work for you, naturally, in any given situation, regardless of the stress level. When you walk into your office or a restaurant or a greengrocer’s shop, you don’t hover outside anxiously rehearsing how you will deliver your lines.

We all communicate each day without fear of failure. If you can understand how normal, relaxed, informal spoken communication works, you will be able to understand what you must do, and keep on doing during formal spoken communication.

Your conversational abilities are far more practised than your literary abilities. Casual conversation is not constructed in a literary way. You do not always finish your sentences. You repeat yourself. You use ungrammatical constructions – but you are obeying a different set of rules.

Most of us are astonished the first time we hear our own voice. The resonant sounds we’ve heard in our heads seem thin and alien issuing from an audio or video player. It doesn’t matter. Think about some of our top entertainers and most effective communicators: Jonathan Ross, Frank Skinner, Chris Tarrant. None of these gifted talkers would win prizes at RADA. There is nothing of the mighty orator about any of them. All these famous and successful individuals stopped worrying about their voices long ago, if they ever did. They are each concerned with putting across their ideas. They speak to us with clarity, cheerfulness, and charm – and sometimes conviction.

2 Projecting your personality

Your personality is your greatest asset. It is personal chemistry that makes people want to be friends with other people. Very few of us, given the choice, will choose to associate with someone we don’t like or trust.

Think carefully about how you come across when you communicate effortlessly under everyday circumstances. Probably you will not have considered this before. It is an extremely useful exercise because it makes you appreciate what you must also do during your speeches.

When a person talks informally, they probably sit or stand in a relaxed manner, breathing naturally, maintaining an appropriate level of eye contact, gesturing every now and then to reinforce their words, and smiling at intervals to establish and maintain rapport. Yet the moment this same person stands up to address an audience, they become nervous, distrust their innate powers of communication, and rely on a range of artificial presentation techniques.

Knowing that you not only can, but also should ‘be yourself’ will stop you worrying about your ‘performance’, and allow you to concentrate on what really matters: being sincere, emotional and witty.

Each speaker is unique; each speaker has a unique style. What might be most effective for one person would be a disaster for another. Did Elvis, Sinatra and Johnny Rotten all sound the same singing My Way? Of course not. The artist makes the crucial difference. So, too, does the speaker.

We all have some abilities and talents. Don’t hide your light under a bushel. Any regional accents or dialects which you can do well (and only if you can do them well) should be incorporated into your stories. A punchline is doubled in effect in the appropriate Cockney or Brummie accent, especially after a ‘straight’ and serious build up.

3 Being heard

If there is public address equipment available, find out how it works, try to get some practice and then use it.

If there is no sound-enhancing equipment, speak as clearly and as loudly as is necessary to be heard. If the only other person in the room was at the back, you would talk to him or her naturally, at the right level, without shouting or straining, by:

• keeping your head up
• opening your mouth wider than during normal speech
• using clearer consonants
• slowing down.