Weddings are meant to be the next source of joy and memories. This means that it requires spot-on preparation in all the events that will be carried out.
A speech is one of those important areas that will make the memorable moments of this special day. Your wedding speech needs to be captivating from the beginning for your audience to remain hooked.
People use different ways of delivering, writing, and reading the speech to make it more memorable. There are so many methods to explore based on your personality, character, and the nature of your audience. In this article, we will show you how to make your speech’s opening outstanding.
Understand your Audience
This means that you should know the guests. Start by ensuring that you understand the bride and groom’s Family dynamics. Some family members may or may not be okay with hearing some jokes or opinions about something.
They may also not appreciate some stories about the bride or groom that you may add to the speech, maybe for comedic effect. Make an effort to also have sufficient knowledge of their cultural background and age group, so that you will not sound offensive or unintentionally come out as rude. Doing this will spare the newlyweds, yourself, and other people any awkwardness or backlash.
From the introduction, we mentioned how important the opening line of your speech is. Tailoring the opening line to resonate with the audience will make your speech interesting to listen to and will be in many stories about the wedding afterward. You can make your opening line capture your audience by having a funny greeting, saying a joke or pun, or telling a short story. Add the appropriate emotions to this and the crowd will yearn to hear what you have to say.
Types of Opening Lines
Opening lines can carry a variety of feelings that shape them into their different types. We will discuss the types of opening lines with you below.
- Humorous Openings
For a humourous opening, you can use a light-hearted joke or anecdote to break the ice. You can identify a fun part of the wedding to take a joke from, or just base your joke on your personal experience with the wedding guests. Those are the best places to derive a joke from because it will have better context since the guests will likely relate. An example is, “The last time I ate this much cake was in my dream when I was six years old.”
- Sentimental Opening
Here, you will have to give a heartfelt expression of love or joy. Seeing a lifelong union happening to someone close to you can already bring up feelings of love and even pride for them, what you need to do is to verbalize them. Such speeches sound better when they are spoken on the spot and not prewritten. This is because people appreciate raw unfiltered love more than a scripted one when it comes to sentiments. A great example of a sentimental opening would be, “Today is when I prove to myself and all of you that whatever makes you happy makes me happy too.”
- Quotations
Another way to open your speech would be with a relevant and inspiring quote. It could be one about love, marriage, or commitment. An example would be, “True love begins at the end of a rainbow of infatuation. Making the effort afterward is what is celebrated.”
- Interactive Opening
You can also engage the audience with a question or a toast such as, “To the bride and groom’s love and their decision to love each other for life.” An interactive opening will prevent your audience from being bored making it a common wedding opening. If your speaking voice is monotone or less loud, consider going for this type of wedding opening.
- Storytelling
With storytelling, your speech will begin with a short, captivating story about the couple. The fact that I hey have selected you to give their wedding speech shows that they consider you close and they share experiences with you. You can think of a moment that shaped their marriage or first meet-up. It can also carry a lesson or something you observed about their shared love and personalities. You can use this, “The first time the groom told me that he had found love, I had already seen it from a mile away. Small cute mannerisms that he never had began and they gave him a lot of joy. True love can transform. They have given me a template that I can use for comparison to identify true love.”
Examples of Humorous Opening For A Wedding Speech
- Toast to the bride and groom, which is what you do a lot of times in your first months of marriage as you adapt to each other.
- How many of you have ever seen a feeling? Most of you will say that feelings are only felt not seen but the love between the bride and groom is so evident that it may progress to the next level and be touched.
- The concept of weddings has always been a subject that I never understood. But now I understand that loving someone to the point of sharing the rest of your life with them is not only crazy and unhinged but beautiful.
Examples of Sentimental Opening For A Wedding Speech
- I’ve known the bride and groom for a very long time. Seeing them get married makes me feel proud like a parent. I should have walked you down the aisle.
- Today I have been reminded of the true definition of friendship, being happy for each other when you see them happy.
- We often underestimate the power of love. People have based religions on this feeling, it has stopped wars, hate, and genocides. That powerful feeling is now being shared between these two lovely people, and that makes them very powerful.
Examples of Quotations For A Wedding Speech
- True love is many things. It can be a weapon to fight off any negative emotion. It can be a shield from the same emotions. It can also be a rock on which you should base your marriage.
- Many people have different definitions of love. Many too believe it doesn’t exist. But what I know is that all the good virtues of the world put together, from selflessness to patience, form this amazing feeling.
- Some people would be right to call love a super feeling. It has different explanations, branches, and versions. And feeling and sharing it can change the world. That is what the bride and groom have today, this is why their wedding is so special.
Examples of Interactive Opening For A Wedding Speech
- People say feelings are only felt, but the truth is that all your other senses can feel it when you love someone. Every time we were with the groom and bride, he smiled a lot, told jokes, and was a different person out of his comfort zone. Only love can make you feel so safe, and that is what the newlyweds have between them.
- How many people here have ever believed in love? I doubted the existence of true love until I saw firsthand what the bride and groom share. They are kind, loving, empathetic, and forgiving of each other. They have shown us what true love is, and I don’t blame anyone who would want to hold on to that for the rest of their lives.
- Years ago I used to wonder why people would sacrifice everything for love. Who else? But something so beautiful only shows up once in your life, and assuring each other of that is a reflection of God teaching us how to love beautifully.
Examples of Storytelling For A Wedding Speech
- I remember that I was the one who introduced the bride and groom and the fact that I’m at their wedding a few months later makes me feel warm inside. I feel identified by the universe because every day after that I have fought for their love as if mine, without any regrets. That’s why I told the groom that if he ever messes this up, I might unalive him.
- When you think about it, the bride and groom’s love story can be made into a Disney movie. They met abruptly almost mistakenly, got obsessed with each other, helped each other overcome a big obstacle then got married. Med school feels like the fire that refined their love and helped them prove a point to each other. Their sacrifice to make time for each other, spend money on each other even while being broke, and always be on each other’s side just shows how far they’ll go for each other.
- Marriage is scary but shouldn’t be if you’ve already been doing the best for each other before. The bride and groom had already found their dynamic and how to coexist. They worked like a well-oiled machine or switching gears. This kind of partnership and selflessness towards each other assures me that they are not one bit scared about being a part of each other for the rest of their lives.
Conclusion
We hope that this article has helped you figure out the right words to put together for an awesome opening for your wedding speech. Simply shape them into having your additional details or edits to them. Remember to also observe the right gestures and expressions to make your speech vibrant. The bride and groom will always appreciate a wedding speech that isn’t boring or typical.
