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Wedding Planner: Tips to make the perfect toast

While guests might enjoy wedding toasts, best men and maids of honour may be nervous about honouring the brides and grooms in such public settings.
toast
The best toasts are brief and well rehearsed.

While guests might enjoy wedding toasts, best men and maids of honour may be nervous about honouring the brides and grooms in such public settings. That anxiety is perfectly normal, especially for those who have never before been asked to serve as maid of honour or best man.

Those tasked with toasting the newly anointed husband and wife can consider the following tips to make the task a little easier: Keep it brief. While there might be many things you want to say, try to express yourself as concisely as possible. Convey your relationship with the bride and/or groom, but avoid lengthy histories that might come off as rambling. While personal anecdotes that shed some humorous light on your relationship are great additions to wedding toasts, avoid going into too much detail when telling such stories, focusing instead on the parts of the stories that illustrate your feelings and generate a few laughs.

Avoid being too formal. Even the most formal wedding can benefit from a toast that veers more toward the spontaneous. While you want to thank the parents of the bride and groom for hosting the wedding and the guests for being on hand to celebrate, don't feel as though you need to be especially formal. Giving a less formal speech also may help calm your nerves.

Practice, practice, practice. Practice your speech ahead of time so you are not reading from cards or notepads during the toast. Reading from a piece of paper is less likely to engage the audience than if you are speaking to them directly and sharing some heartfelt thoughts about the bride and groom. It's alright to hold onto some cue cards to keep you on track as you deliver your toast, but practicing your toast as the wedding draws near will boost your confidence and make you more comfortable once you have the microphone in hand.

Stay appropriate. Humour adds a lot to wedding toasts, but make sure to clean up any humourous anecdotes so they can be shared with all wedding guests, including kids. In addition, avoid stories that may end up embarrassing the bride and groom.

Share well wishes. Before you raise your glass and ask guests to do the same, express some heartfelt well wishes for the bride and groom. Doing so is a fitting end to a tradition that's meant to highlight the special relationship brides and grooms have with their maids of honour and best men.