Wedding Breeze

Wow.  What a great time in life.  If you’ve been selected to give the Maid of Honor Speech at your friend’s wedding, you’re likely trying to get some ideas.  Allow me to try to give you the best of what I know from my years of experience as a professional speaking consultant.

Planning is important, and you’ve done a great thing by looking for information ahead of time.  You’d be surprised how many people pretend the fear they have about public speaking isn’t there and tell themselves “I’ll just put it off until the couple of days beforehand,” “the night before,” or God forbid “in the car on the way there.  ” By the way, if you’re not nervous, I’m worried.  What I’m trying to say here is that it’s completely normal to feel anything from a tad jittery to utterly terrified at the idea of having to give your maid of honor speech.  It’s totally normal.  I still get nervous every single time I prepare to speak, whether at a professional engagement, or even a casual dinner.  Okay, now that you know your nerves are normal, let’s look at the maid of honor speech itself.

The technical aspects of the Maid of Honor Speech:

First, you might consider starting by telling the audience who you are, and thanking them for coming.  Then, consider a story or two.  Everyone on the planet loves to hear stories .  The first might be something about what you thought of the groom when you first met him.  This always seems to be a good topic, because it’s perfectly acceptable for you to just slightly poke fun at him, as if to say “I wasn’t really sure about Jim when he first started dating Laura.  He drove this old beat up car and had a little bit of a strange craving for French fries after 12am .”

Hello!  In case I haven’t had the chance to meet you in person yet, my name is _________.  I’m the maid of honor today , and I’m so proud of _______ (the bride).  First, I want to say congrats ________(bride & groom).  Also, thanks to _______(the bride’s parents, who likely put on the wedding) and everyone who came from near and far to be here with ________(bride and groom) on their very special day.

Keep any jabs you might consider aiming at the groom in your maid of honor speech to a low level.  As you will probably be sensing just thinking about your past experience, at a wedding, people place the parts of themselves that might be frustrated about the “darker side” of humanity on the back burner.  They are there to experience feelings of love, joy and happiness.  They really don’t want to be reminded about the bad things that can come out in people, like lust, greed, pain, etc .So keep from telling jokes that might hint at this sort of things.  A slight , ever-so-slightly jabbing comment about the groom is usually okay, but only once, and try to make it very light.

When I first met ____ (groom), I remember wondering if things would work out. I recall him knocking on the door (or hearing about him knocking on her door if you weren’t living with the bride) one night at 12 am asking for _____(bride).  He was wearing this old flannel shirt, and I think asked ____(bride) if she wanted to get some french fries.I had my second thoughts , but as I got to know him , I began to see he was an easy person to talk to, he has a good sense of humor, and eventually I came to the conclusion he was a perfect match for ______(bride).  I want to be the second to say welcome _______(groom) to the family. We hope we can show you the same outgoing and open spirit as you have shown us.

To continue with this exact speech example, see this site: with an example Maid of Honor Speech.