Wedding Speech Order

Giving a toast at a wedding can be a difficult job, especially for those that aren’t used to speaking in front of large audience. Also, there’s a certain wedding speech order that has to be followed and in this article I’ll describe the 4 main speeches at almost every wedding.

The first one is the bride’s father speech. Because he’s the one that paid for the wedding (at least in some countries, the traditions says that the bride’s parents pay for the wedding), he will have the opening toast. He will start by welcoming everybody to the wedding and thanking them for being present at this special event. Then he will say a few things about his daughter. He can share some memories from her childhood or some other stories that deserve to be commemorated at the wedding. Also, it’s recommended to compliment her a little, she likes that, especially on her wedding day. Then he will also say a few nice things about the groom and welcome him into his family and then he will close the speech by giving a toast for the newlyweds and wishing them the best of luck.

The father of the groom is the one that follows and his speech has pretty much the same structure as the bride’s father’s, only he will focus more on the groom. First, he will thank to the father of the bride for the opening toast and for paying for the wedding, then he will also thank to the people that came to the wedding. Next, he will share some stories about his son, and he can choose between a funny speech or a more sentimental one. It’s up to him. But whatever he says, he needs to make sure he doesn’t make the groom feed bad with all kind of embarrassing stories. Then, he will compliment the bride and welcome her into his family and in the end, raise the glass and propose a toast for the groom and the bride.

The next speech is the groom’s speech. He will usually thank to his father for all the nice things he said about him in his speech, than also thank to the bride’s father for the opening speech and to everybody in the room for coming to the wedding. For the rest of the speech, he should focus on his wife, telling her how beautiful she is, how much she means to him, how happy he is that they’re getting married, and all kinds of cheesy stuff. Then he will thank to the best man, groomsmen and the bridesmaids for being there and for helping with the wedding.

The last speech is usually held by the best man. This is supposed to be the funniest speech at the wedding, where the best man has to tell all kind of funny stories about the groom and the bride, but also not crossing the line. It’s expected of him to be funny and entertain the audience, but his jokes shouldn’t embarrass the newlyweds. Also, he should thank to the groom, on behalf of the groomsmen and the bridesmaids, for his toast to them and close the wedding ceremony with a funny line.

This is the traditional wedding speech order in most cultures, although there are also other speeches that can be held, like the bride’s mother speech, the father of the groom speech, the bride’s speech and the maid of honor speech.