Help! I Don't Want a Friend to Speak at My Wedding
Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie hears from a reader whose pushy wedding guest thinks they've been invited to speak at their wedding. The reader writes:
My partner and I recently decided to get married. While out with one of the wedding guests last week, she remarked, out of the blue, “I've been working on my speech for your wedding.” I was stunned. While my partner and I like this person and did invite her to the wedding, we had not asked her to speak.
I think I said, “great,” because I was so caught off-guard. The problem is, when it came to deciding who should speak, we chose from the many friends and family who know us better and longer than this woman. Is there any way we can explain to her that while we still welcome her attendance at the wedding, we would rather leave the speech-making to others?
Eddie responds:
A wedding ceremony is, in part, theatre, spectacle, entertainment – bread and circuses to keep the half-crocked rabble you've invited (a.k.a. your friends and relatives) from becoming restive and cranky. And too many speeches can do as much damage to an otherwise well-orchestrated wedding as too many long-winded monologues can to a play or movie.
I once flew to the Italian Riviera to attend the “destination wedding” of a hotshot pal.
The cash outlay to get there was like a knife in my heart. But it quickly shaped up to be one of those awesome, once-in-a-lifetime, this-is-what-it's-all-about type deals. The food was delicious. The scenery, breathtaking: gilded youths jumping off the decks of their daddy's yachts into the azure waters of the Gulf of Genoa. People scooting along the cobblestone streets on Vespas. The whole thing was like a Fellini film.
The ceremony and speeches took place in a hauntingly beautiful medieval monastery.
And that's where the bride's sisterzilla single-handedly almost kiboshed the joyful momentum of the entire proceedings with an unbelievable toe-pincher of a speech.
She droned on and on, filling the summery Italian air with meandering anecdotes beginning in earliest childhood. Her words were deeply moving – to her. Halfway through, she burst into tears that flowed down her cheeks as freely as the chardonnay had, no doubt, flowed down her throat beforehand.
Her speech lasted, I swear, 25 minutes. People were openly groaning. Afterward, the groom was grim. The bride was furious, and heard to be darkly muttering her sister “ruined” her wedding.
Now, I've seen a fair amount of this in my time. So, with wedding season upon us, before I get to my advice re your friend, allow me to offer as a public service announcement, David Eddie's Three Cardinal Rules of Wedding Speechification.
They’re simple: 1) Don't get drunk beforehand; 2) Do not attempt to ad lib or “wing” your speech; 3) Never, ever do both. ...
Click here to read the rest of Eddie's advice.