Whatever you do, please leave these 5 P’s out of your speech!
- Profanity
- Poop
- Projectile vomiting
- Previous partners
- Politics
Let ‘s take a deeper look at why I’m sharing this advice, and a few workarounds —
PROFANITY
Grandma’s gonna be there. Don’t be f#¢king stupid. Keep it clean.
POOP
Wedding receptions involve food. The people you’re talking to are either eating or soon will be. Don’t gross them out.
You may have a great story about the couple getting food poisoning in Cabo, or the art the groom created with what he found in his diaper when he was 12 months-old, but I’m sure you have other stories too. Try and use those.
PROJECTILE VOMITING
See poop.
PREVIOUS PARTNERS
Don’t mention flings and don’t mention exes. The wedding day is about two people. Keep your speech about them.
You never know what weirdness or feelings are still around, and you never which details one half of the couple may have kept from the other half. You don’t want to be the reason for their first fight as a married couple.
POLITICS
Even if you think you know the political leanings of most of your audience, trust me, you don’t.
Insert something as (unfortunately) divisive as politics into a punchline, and I can guarantee you that the people who disagree with you will immediately turn off and stop listening.
If you’re thinking, “So what,” remember that as a speaker, you want as many people as possible actively listening and paying attention to you. More attention means more laughs, more connection and a more successful speech.
If you absolutely must mention one of the 5 P’s, make sure you avoid being graphic and that you keep the emphasis on the part of the story that gives us worthwhile insight into the subject of the story.
We don’t need to hear the gory details of the food poisoning. Tell us that the bride and groom ate some bad Mahi-Mahi on their first vacation together and spent three gruesome days in their two-star hotel room – and managed to come out of that experience more in love with one another than before.
If you’re the father of the bride, and your daughter takes after you to the point where, at 4 years-old, she told a telemarketer to “f*ck off,” maybe it’s worth including. But if you’re the best man and the groom told you the same thing every morning when you tried to wake him up for class, it’s probably not.
And politics — avoid it like the plague. That’s not to say you can’t mention that someone lives in DC and does work that’s important to them. But do your best to stay away from using specific names or issues as punchlines. You may have written a legitimately great joke, but this is a wedding speech, not a stand-up set.
