Asking a friend or family to give a speech at your wedding can be on the greatest honors you can bestow upon a person for your special day. But before it’s showtime, and that person finds themselves standing up in your reception hall, with a glass of bubbly and a body of nerves, there are some things you might want to remind them of before they put their speech together and deliver it to a room full of your favorite people.

 

If you’re wondering what you should fill them in about, here are 7 things to remind those who are giving a toast at your wedding.

 

1. Bring an Extra Copy

Print out an extra copy and give it to a friend to hold in case you misplace yours. Save it on your phone too, just in case nobody can find a paper trace of the speech right before it’s time to deliver it.

2. Don’t Rush to the Open bar

It may seem like a good idea to kick the nerves by taking multiple trips to the open bar before you give your speech. Try not to take down too many shots before you read your words or else you may be stumbling over them more than you’d like.

 

3. Keep it Short & Sweet

The best speeches are the ones that are short, sweet, and don’t include extra minutes of rambling words or verbal fillers.

 

4. Ditch the Inside Jokes

Unless the joke makes sense to everyone in the room, leave it out of the speech. You want to make sure you grab the audience’s attention and not make them feel like they weren’t invited to the wedding party.

 

5. Practice Makes You Less Nervous

The more times you read the speech to yourself, the more you’ll feel confident on the day of the wedding to deliver it to a room of people you’ve probably never seen before.

 

6. Remember the Audience

Keep the speech as PG as possible. Remember, the audience is filled with all different people from the bride and groom’s life.

 

7. Leave Out Anything too Embarrassing

If there’s a story or a memory that’ll get the bride or groom’s cheeks flushed red, leave it out. You don’t want to leave them in tears, bad tears, after the speech is over.