Weddingbee

Since Mr. CC’s half-brother/best man isn’t a fan of public speaking and was absolutely dreading having to give a toast, Mr. CC asked his stepfather to give a speech in his place. Since Mr. CC’s stepfather is French, he is not familiar with the “best man speech” or what it entails. So, I’ve been gathering some tips and advice for him, to give him an idea of what is generally expected from the best man.

One of Mrs. Daffodil’s best men giving his speech

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I love a good wedding toast. I’m sensitive, super sentimental and schmaltzy, so wedding toasts always manage to plug my weak little heartstrings. So, as you can imagine, I’ve been anticipating the tears and laughter that might accompany our own wedding toasts for some time.
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by Sister Emerald

[My sister’s paper, How to be Maid of Honor for Your Big Sister’s Wedding was a big hit, so as promised, here is her toast! She actually chose to write a poem instead of a traditional speech, and she was still writing it the morning of the wedding!]

To write a speech for two people so dear
And have it sound perfect, so very sincere.
You’d think it’d be easy to jot down the lines
But I’ve begun over and over a number of times.
And now you sit here on your special night
Listening to this poem that still isn’t quite right.

Dear favorite big sister, yes, I only have one
You’re beautiful, loving, and lots of fun.
You’re kind, caring, and thoughtful, too
And everyday I become more thankful for you.
And Borton, I’ve enjoyed the times we hung out
There’ll be more times for watching basketball and movies, no doubt

Charlene and Borton, you mean a lot to me
And I love that we’re all family!

I can’t believe it has been almost two months since we got married… I am not sure where the time went! And I thought things would calm down after the wedding.

I have been in full album making mode (and by being in full mode, I mean thinking about it every day). I have been struggling with what type of album I want to make (Mrs. Ant’s posts have been very helpful), and have come to the conclusion that I am just going to have to take my time in searching to find the right one for us and stop adding all this pressure that it has to be finished by Christmas.

So, I’m really writing because I want to share the text from our maid of honor and best man’s speeches. (We are still waiting for Mr. Raspberry’s brother to send us his, so I just have the MOH speech for now)

Now, when I told her that I wanted to post it, she freaked out and said that it was so much better when she actually delivered the speech, which is totally true, since she added a few little anecdotes, but I wanted to share since so much thought goes into writing these, I thought it might help in sparking ideas for other MOHs.

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My brother has agreed to be our MC and I am so happy he said yes! I had been putting off asking him because he is SO busy and I didn’t want to add more to his already full plate. But I was also worried that if he said no, we would have to ask someone else and I wanted to make sure that we would be giving them as much time as possible to prepare.

When I finally asked my brother, his reaction was not what I expected at first (he looked like I had asked him to give me his first born child or something!). So when he said that he had to think about it, I thought for sure it was going to be a “no” answer. Then morning he e-mailed me and said that he would be honored to be our MC!

This was a very important part of our reception since we are only having 1 speech, a toast to the couple, done by our MC. It HAD to be the right person. Someone who knows us both well, who would be funny, and who would not be too sentimental, too embarrassing or too long! (I know - tall order, right?) My oldest brother is the best story teller that we know, he has such a fantastic sense of humour and has been there through our whole relationship. So as soon as we started talking about who we wanted to do that job, we both knew that he would be our first choice.

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I watched some of the wedding videos from Blue Core Media last night. I can’t explain to you all how lovely they are - you’ll just have to watch them! For Vancouver brides, you’re so lucky to have them in your local area. If only I could afford to fly them into Dallas to tape our wedding.

My eyes were swollen and red from crying so much after watching his reels. What stuck out so much were the speeches - they were all so beautifully written and read. All three videos are beautiful but Adrienne and Albert’s video was especially touching. I really felt the love. They were also featured in Real Weddings magazine.

If you want to see the video click on http://www.bluecoremedia.com.

Will you preparing a speech for your other half during the reception?

Japan has a culture of speech-giving. In a traditional wedding for instance, the bride and/or the groom’s boss (yes, boss from work) is often asked to give a toast in addition to those by friends and families. But in the US, the best man and the maid of honor usually give the toasts. We already have 2 best men and 1 MOH, so that’s 3 people giving speeches.

Plus Mr. Orange thinks his grandfather will also give a toast (actually his grandfather gives the sweetest toasts ever!) so that makes it 4. Then there’s the blessing of the bread by Mr. Orange’s other grandfather, and the blessing for the meal by my pastor….bringing the toast/speech/prayer total 6. Wow, is that too many?

How many toasts/speeches are you planning?

While browsing via StumbleUpon recently, I came across this site and wanted to get y’all’s reaction to it:

The Perfect Toast

Basically, the site’s premise is that for $39-$155, you can have someone else write and coach you on delivering a wedding toast. This seems sorta shady to me…it’s rather akin to those essay-writing sites that so many high school and college students use. Plus, those delivering the toasts are usually good friends or close relatives of the bride and groom–they should hopefully be able to come up with something to say on their own, without paying someone else to do so. I understand that not everyone is a show-stopping speechwriter, but I always thought that was part of the charm of a toast: heartfelt, very sincere, yet not always expertly executed or written.

What do you think? Would you use this service? How would you feel if someone used it to speak at your wedding?