Tips for Toasting: Your Ultimate Guide to Crafting Impactful Wedding Speeches

As I guide my clients through the vow writing and ceremony program creation processes, I am frequently asked about reception speeches and toasts. And, with more than 20 years of experience in performance, public relations, and speech coaching, I am no stranger to curating these heartfelt expressions of either your gratitude as a newlywed or of your hopes for the new couple as a close family member or friend. I’ve found that wedding speeches and toasts are best-received when they are short, simple, and grounded in either humor or heart. In this blog, we’ll dive deeper into those three criteria, and determine what really makes a good reception speech or toast.

Length

First and foremost, aiming for a shorter speech allows you to cut any fluff out of the equation early. It forces you to distill your deepest feelings into 2-3 minutes of spoken content, and ensures that you won’t rely on the extraneous details. Audiences can only be expected to actively engage for so long at a time, and 2 minutes + 30 seconds seems to be the “sweet spot” for listener engagement.

As you refine and pare down your script, you’ll find that the most impactful, unforgettable sentiments will rise to the surface. With time constraints comes greater concision, which thus elevates the emotional, spiritual, and intellectual impact of your words. A Maid of Honor, for example, might choose to spend more time in her toast setting a celebratory tone for the evening than reminiscing on her and the bride’s high school days. This isn’t to say that you cannot include small nods to your personality and experiences — only that, when you give yourself a hard time limit for a speech, the most potent and important material will appear to you with increased clarity.

Simplicity

Next, of course, is the simplicity factor. You want to ensure that your speech or toast is completely accessible to the audience — no inside jokes, no T.M.I. anecdotes, and no complex explanations. Your words should have equal potential for emotional impact across the entire audience, not just among your closest friends. We already know that an unnecessarily-long speech will lose the attention of guests, and an inability to understand what the content of your speech means and why it matters will only exacerbate that disconnect. In essence, only when you are confident that your words will resonate regardless of the audience’s collective identities and experiences will the speech or toast be ready for delivery.

Humor & Heart

Finally, I’ve found that taking a humorous approach, a heartfelt approach, or a combination of the two is most useful in crafting truly touching addresses. In the context of a wedding, you’re seeking to evoke amusement, excitement, and warmth in your guests, and the best way to do so is through funny anecdotes (accessibly-told, of course!) and emotion-based tributes to the newlyweds. If you use your memories with the couple and your assessment of how this relationship has changed them for the better to guide you, you can’t go wrong!

And, if all else fails, grounding the entire speech or toast in a metaphor is always a helpful tool. It gives you a framework to refer back to as you write the speech, and builds in a satisfying full-circle moment for the audience at the conclusion. Whether you’re characterizing your older sister’s new spouse as her “missing puzzle piece” or imagining the love your best friend and his partner share as a sprouting sapling, a good metaphor will almost always heighten the impact of your words.

As with all speeches, in the end it will come down to your delivery. Focus on amplifying your voice, adopting a measured vocal pace, and making eye contact with members of the audience when you can. There is definitely an art to public speaking, but it is also a skill anyone can master through diligent practice.

In sum, if your speech has been crafted with an ultimate focus on audience experience and emotional impact — and practiced many, many times! — it will certainly touch the hearts of each and every guest in attendance.