Wedding Speech, One Week Time Table

Wedding Speeches - The One Week Timetable

I have one week to prepare for my wedding speech - what do I need to do?

First of all, you might be sitting there thinking: "How on earth am I going to do this in a week?" On the other hand, you might be thinking: "Do it in a week? No problem."

If you belong to the first category I would say: "Stay calm, what you have to do is possible." If you belong to the second category (although if you do, you may be unlikely to be reading this!), I would say: "That's fine, but please make sure that you have a full appreciation of the different elements of the task in hand.

Unless you have already planned what to say, the first thing to do, if you haven't already, is to go to our website and get the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets be it one for a Groom, Best Man or Father of the Bride. You will be able to work best with the pack if you print it off.

Plan your Preparations Next, consider your schedule for the week ahead.

How much free time do you have? Is it spaced evenly throughout the week? When can you rely on not being interrupted? Are your lunch hours available? Is it possible for you to book a day off work?

You need to set aside time to assess your Master Class material and make your selections from it, time to think up your own personal material, time to collate it all together and order it, time to get it onto cards (which you need to schedule in time to buy), and time to practise.

At the start of the week prepare a schedule charting exactly when you will do what and for how long. As the week progresses, keep track of how you're doing; if you lose time on one activity you'll have to speed up somewhere else. However please don't worry; there has been many a wedding speaker who has been in this situation and has succeeded massively, especially those who have been smart enough to take advantage of our Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets !!

Work out What to say

You can give a completely successful wedding speech simply by using one of the examples in our speeches packs. You can improve on it by adding two or three personal reminiscences, thus customising it for your particular wedding and guests.

So, you have your pack. Read through it - all of it (I know there's a lot, but it's a great opportunity to practise your speed reading!) and highlight jokes, quotes and toasts that appeal to you.

Whenever you have a spare moment, consider your Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets; remember that it is quite alright to choose sections from different speeches to create your own composite speech.

As you walk or commute around trawl through your memories for anecdotes etc which you can use. Carry a notebook so that you can write them down straight away. Don't leave it at the office! Also, do read the help files on our website; there is a great deal of useful advice on matters ranging from preparing your notes to practising and control of nerves.

Practice and Rehearse And lastly, don't panic. And to help you not to panic, be sure to get some practising in - as much as you can find time for.

Lots of practise won't make a bad speech good, but no practise is likely to make an otherwise good speech bad. No-one wants this to happen, least of all you.
Practise in front of a mirror and pretend that you are there at the top table, delivering to a packed house before taking your seat to massive applause.

If you follow these guidelines plus those in our Help Files and choose material from our pack which you genuinely like, backing it up with two or three solid personal contributions, it is difficult to see anything stopping you from being an immense success.

Bruno Barton :)

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Wedding Speech, One Month Time Table

Wedding Speeches - The One Month Timetable

I have one month to prepare for my wedding speech - what do I need to do?

You will save a great deal of time and the quality of your material will be assured if you buy the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets Today !! click this link to find out why today is your best time to lock in to our great deal !!

In this article I assume that you are joining us today :)

If your choice is to write the whole of your speech yourself without our material, you must allow extra time to find or create you own humour and linking sentences and to craft the tone and style appropriately to your personality, audience and the occasion.

Your first action, then, is to download the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets.

Once you have accessed your speech pack, read through the 5 speeches provided, decide whether you will use one speech as it is, or if you will mix and match from the 5 speeches.

Read through the extra jokes, quotes and toasts and put a tick beside the ones you like.

Spend a little time collating extra information from your memories and research with friends and relatives, and jot down any jokes that you have heard which are appropriate.

Also, do have a go at creating some original humour for the personalities involved in your wedding. This may not be as difficult for you as it sounds. Please see my earlier Bruno's Blog Posts for a whole series on this subject.

Decide on your 'final' material for the speech, bearing in mind you only need 15 or so snippets or jokes to fill 5 minutes when wrapped with linking material.

If you are unsure of any of this material you may wish at this stage to bounce it off someone to ensure that it is inoffensive to everybody.

The next stage is to arrange the material in a logical order, interspersing it with the material chosen from the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets.

Now work on the exact wording you will be using for your opening. It is great to start off almost any speech in any circumstance with humour. If you can get them to laugh near the beginning it relaxes both yourself and the audience. If you can do this, everything else should be plain sailing.

So choose your opening remarks very carefully indeed; get an early laugh and you're on your way.

I recommend choosing your conclusion next, so that you are establishing the beginning and the end first, making them witty, sincere and profound. Your speech is like a bridge crossing a river; it needs solid foundations before the graceful arch can be constructed.

In writing the links you need words and phrases which smoothly progress from one passage to the next. Use transitional phrases like 'by the way' 'which reminds me' or 'changing the subject completely' and 'which leads me onto'.

Conclude you speech with a toast, chosen from those provided in the speech pack or one of your own.

Now put your speech away for a couple of days. Come back to it refreshed and go through it with a fine toothcomb. Do you still find the humour funny? Are you happy with the choice of linking words? How about the exact wording of the jokes and anecdotes?

Stringently remove and replace less effective words throughout the speech.

Put the wedding speech away for a couple of days.

Do the same again until you are fully happy with the material.

When satisfied with the content, you will need to reduce it to a set of notes on cards. Full guidelines are given in the "Free Help" section of our website. These guidelines have been developed from my own experiences over nearly 20 years as a speaker. They work for me, they will work for you too.

When you have your notes, I urge you to practise, practise, practise as much as you can. As you are preparing several weeks in advance, you have the opportunity to rehearse to such an extent that on the day you will know your material backwards. Make the most of this! Again the place to look for guidelines is the "Practise" section of our "Free Help" page.

I hope this all goes really well for you. If you follow this advice, it will.

Bruno Barton :)

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HELP! Wedding Speech One Day Time Table

HELP! I've only got one day! Wedding Speeches - The One Day Timetable

So you've only got today to produce an effective, stimulating, entertaining and sincere wedding speech. Are you panicking?

Don't !! We are able to provide you with all the ingredients you will need to do well tomorrow.

The first thing to consider is whether you can take any time off work - the more the better. But even if you end up with only an hour to produce a few words, using that time in preparations will definitely help you.

Step by step, First - Download the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets from http://www.fineweddingspeeches.com/

Even if your available time is tiny, you now have 5 suitable wedding speeches, and you can:

choose which of our five speeches suits you best and use it "as is" except for the insertion of the correct Bride and Groom's names throughout. Each one of our speeches will stand up in front of any audience.

If you can engineer more time, all well and good. Search through your memory for an appropriate anecdote or two to personalise the speech a little. Use your time to intersperse the material into your chosen speech, perhaps with selected material from the jokes and quotes and toasts collections.

Prepare your speaker's notes: Produce your final notes - type or write them on to cards. If none are available use paper, but not full sheets of A4. With these in front of you any otherwise imperceptible shake of your hands due to nerves will be magnified out of all proportion by the windsock-like flapping of the paper. Rather, trim the sheets across the middle to make A5 sheets and use those.

When writing notes, never split a sentence over two cards - you will find yourself stopping in the middle of a crucial statement or joke and searching wildly for its punchline.

Make sure that the cards are in the right order - number them and either staple them together or punch a hole and use a treasury tag.

Print off / photocopy a second set and keep it in your pocket, just in case of accidental loss of the master set.

Rehearse !! Do try to find the time to read through the speech out loud at least once - more if you can. Practise will help your confidence and make the occasion less of an ordeal.

Deliver your wedding speech

When you stand up to "deliver" to "perform" your speech: don't belt through the speech through out of control nerves - breathe deeply, force yourself to proceed through the speech at a measured pace with plenty of pauses to allow the audience to mull over your words, anticipate humour and appreciate your sincerity.

I can't over emphasise the importance of refraining from alcohol before the speech - if you are tipsy you will be an embarrassment to everyone, particularly yourself. Lay off the beer etc altogether until afterwards.

A closing thought: lots of people will probably offer you conflicting advice about the delivery and content of your speech - by all means consider what they say but don't be distracted from the steps you find here.

And finally, my best wishes for resounding success and a happy day.

Bruno Barton

Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
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Creating Original Humour, Lesson Eight, Mind Mapping

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speech, Lesson Eight, Mind Mapping

Welcome to this month's Bruno's Blog, in which we explore the use of mind mapping to create wedding speech humour.

We are going to illustrate this technique for the wedding reception of a fictional couple, John and Miriam. John has Swiss parentage, plays the violin and enjoys Strauss waltzes and sailing.

The first thing to do is to brainstorm these subjects via mind maps. We'll tackle sailing first; next, Strauss; and finally, Switzerland.

Click below for Mind Map "Brainstorms" examples...

- Sailing
- Strauss
- Switzerland

Please note that these mind maps serve only to illustrate the method.

When I am actually creating humour I brainstorm far more information onto the mind maps than is shown, and create a mindmap for every subject under consideration.

It is not unusual for me to spend a considerable length of time searching through ten or more sheets of A4 paper filled with bubbles and links. Applying the method to this extent always produces numerous ideas for humour, several of which are normally considered excellent by my customers.

Having created these mind maps we scour them for links between subjects on the individual mind maps and between subjects on different mind maps. Amazing as it may seem, wherever there is a link there is a joke.

It will probably not be possible to generate a good joke out of every link, but please be open minded to the good and the bad. As I've said before you need to create a certain amount of chaff to get a few grains of wheat.

The links I can see are as follows (see the green highlighting):

Click below for Mind Map "Connections/links"

- Sailing
- Strauss
- Switzerland

The next step is to write down the connected subjects and convert them into jokes using the tips in my earlier articles on creating wedding speech humour.

I end up with the following; which I can tie into the wedding, many others come to mind but are not listed as being either inappropriate for a wedding reception or just not relevant to the wedding couple, families or guests.

John is of course very keen on Johann Strauss and his music. Strauss came from Vienna, a place famous for white stallions, a fairground with a giant ferris wheel and the film The Third Man.

Like John, Strauss came from a musically talented family: Johann senior, Johann junior and Levi, who was clearly the third man.

John and Miriam enjoy old time ballroom dancing, but moving on just for a moment ...

... you know the fairground in Vienna? It reminds me of "The Waltzers" - remember them? ... the fairground ride which twirls you round-about and violently from side to side? ...

... well, Miriam confided in me once that dancing with John was a bit like that. ... And has asked me to warn you all to stand well clear when she and John lead the wedding dances later on.

As you probably know John enjoys Straus waltzes and playing the violin: Waltzes of course have 3 beats to the bar, so if Strauss had a car you could imagine his number plate being "123 123"; as for the composer Sousa, he wrote marches so his number plate would be "12 12"; meanwhile, Wagner's (Vargner) would be determined by his answer to the question: "Do you spell your name with a V?" To which he would say: "Nein W" (9 W).

I can say at this point that John, as a fiddle player, is saving up for registration "V10 LIN". (Oops, the "Rule of Three" suggests that I've got one too many, so I might cut one of the first three items, but I'll keep the last because it is most relevant to the wedding.)

When John inherited Swiss nationality from his mother a few years ago, the prospect of national service didn't bother him - after all, it's just a bit of ski-ing, which is great fun.

But my concern for the Swiss militia is the tools they are given to fight with: a Swiss army knife. It's a good job they haven't fought any wars for 500 years, because anyone with anything as simple as a catapult would take them to the cleaners.

It is John's Swiss heritage that has given him his immense musical ability, and which has actually won him the hand and heart of his beautiful wife today; she was smitten when she heard him playing The William Tell Overture on his alphorn. Incidentally, did you know that the only reason William Tell shot the apple off his son's head was to put it in his muesli; which of course is the only breakfast John ever eats.

John has recently taken up sailing; I believe that this is to make up for the numerical deficiencies of the Swiss navy. There was the time he took Miriam out in his boat and the weather suddenly became choppy; Miriam was less than impressed with him when he started "yodelling" over the side of the boat.

The Swiss are known for cuckoo clocks, precision and accuracy - their buses and trains are always on time and dovetail together beautifully. What we have here is something else that dovetails together beautifully, another perfect connection! the wedding of John and Miriam. Etc etc.

It takes a little effort to get going with Mind Mapping, but it's well worth it, because with a bit of practise you'll be able to come up with jokes on any subject.

Mind maps are a technique that you will find easier and more effective, the more you practice them, they are frequently used at work and in business. Using mind mapping for your wedding speech may just be the start of learning the technique for other aspects of life.

I wish you every success on the wedding day.

Bruno Barton

Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
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Creating Original Humour, Lesson Seven, Lateral Thinking

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speeches, Lesson Seven, Lateral Thinking

Hi folks. We're going to investigate lateral thinking as a way of inventing humour when writing or adapting your wedding speech.

The term "lateral thinking" was coined in the seventies by Edward de Bono. He wrote a lot of books on creative thinking and devised a great many tools to help generate original thought. One of these was the simple trick of looking at "opposites", and it is this which I am going to share with you in this article.

It is well worth remembering not just for creating humour but for any situation where you require original thinking, eg problem solving, coming up with an invention, a business idea or lyrics for a song. I have used it for all of these purposes.

So much for the preamble - let's get down to the nitty gritty. Let's start the process of generating humour ideas using lateral thinking - thinking "sideways" rather than the usual and obvious frontal assault.

STEP 1 Choose a subject. I recommend that you work through these steps for each main subject in your speech. I' m going to illustrate the method using the theme of football - but you can use any theme at all.

STEP 2 Brainstorm everything that you know about the subject:

FOOTBALL:ball, round, leather, premier league, 3 other leagues, goalkeeper, tall first half, grass, stadium ,supporters, boots, studs, cup.

Obviously there is a lot more that you could put down here, but I think that' s probably enough for illustrative purposes.

STEP 3
ball
round ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... square
leather ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... made of soap => imperial leather
premier league ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... bottom league
3 other leagues ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... 20,000 leagues

goalkeeper
tall ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... short goalie
first half ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... five pints
grass ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... astroturf
stadium ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... amphitheatre
supporters ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... under-miners
boots ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... wellies, flippers
studs ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... stilts
cup ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... saucer

STEP 4 Look at the opposites with an open mind for germs of humour - explore the possibilities:

Square ball: at least it wouldn' t move when you were taking a penalty.

Ball made of soap: in rain it would produce suds and get steadily smaller 20,000 leagues under the sea: underwater football - I' m sure we' ve all seen many a game played under slanting rain.

Short goalie: how about Ronnie Corbett?

First half: pint, cocktail, short Astroturf: Do you prefer grass or Astroturf? I don' t know, I' ve never smoked Astroturf (with due credit to John Sullivan)

Amphitheatre: Throw the players to the lions? Sometimes they deserve it .

Underminers: a race of goblins burrowing under the ground sowing discontent.Wellies, flippers: ideal wear for underwater football Stilts instead of studs: useful to make Ronnie tall enough to be an ace keeper Saucer: Where do you find a cup and saucer? In a canteen

STEP 5 Now we need to turn as many of these ideas into jokes as possible.

A lot of them have humour in them but are difficult to create a punchline for, eg the underminers, the soap-ball etc.

This is just the way it goes - you have to churn out a lot of ideas to get the few that will work. Incidentally, Eddie Izzard generally creates two hours of guff in order to find two minutes worth of useful material.

But I urge you to persist - your wedding speech can benefit immensely from that two minutes.

Bearing in mind the advice given earlier in my columns about humour which is NOT appripriate on the wedding day, we can now attempt to create jokes.

From the above, in addition to the Only Fools... joke, two possibles stand out for me (you might see others): " first half" and " saucer" .

What can we make of these? I like:
He' s still interested in football, but he gets tired after the first half, so he goes on shorts instead.

As for "saucer" and "canteen," how about this: There was a fire at the ground. The manager panicked. "The cup, the cup!" he cried."Don't worry", said the fire-chief, " it didn't even get as far as the canteen."

I hope that you can see the potential of this way of thinking, tying it in with the joke creation methods outlined earlier, and I hope you manage to use it to great effect on the big day.

Good luck!

Bruno Barton :)

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Creating Original Humour, Lesson Six, Rhyme & Acronyms

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speeches, Lesson Six, Rhyme and Acronyms

Hello folks and welcome to this weeks article, where we look at the creation of humour using rhyme and acronyms.

First of all: rhyme. This can be an amusing way to engage your wedding speech audience.

When giving an after dinner speech I like to start by telling the audience something relevant to them before continuing with the main thrust of my speech.
For instance if I am speaking at a Rotary Club I tell them about the time I was taken on to entertain at a Rotary-organised event called the Belbroughton Scarecrow Weekend (where people dress as scarecrows and raise money for charity).

I go on to tell them that I only accepted the job because I thought it was the Belbroughton Hair Grow Weekend. As I am bald this generally raises my first laugh.

So how do you go about inventing rhyme jokes? As ever, begin by brainstorming everything that you know about the Bride, Groom, their hobbies etc.

Next, go out and buy a rhyming dictionary. (Mine cost me £8.99). This is a useful tool for the future if you plan to write poems or songs, but in the short term it could provide you with a great laugh or two to enrich your speech.

Let's look at a few examples:

Example 1) Take a Groom called John who happens to enjoy the great outdoors, particularly gold panning holidays in the Rockies. Bearing in mind that you are allowed to bend the truth on these occasions, we could relate a tale about gold panning using a non-stick frying pan (possibly taking in the Groom's cooking ability at the same time).

Example 2) Refer to the trusty rhyming dictionary. As Christian names are not generally in the index we need to look up a word that "John" rhymes with, such as "on".

Scanning through the rhymes for "on" and pulling out relevant ones could easily lead to the following; "Ladies and gentlemen, following (my story about gold panning etc) I'd like to re-mane John as Teflon John from the Yukon."

A similar process leads to:

No sleeve Steve from Tel Aviv - useful for a vest-wearing kibbutz-visiter.

Bonehead Fred from Birkenhead - for a scouser who keeps his hair cropped
Etc etc

I hope you get the idea. Investigate the names of all the relevant wedding participants: the Bride and Groom's Christian and surnames and their nicknames, their home towns and their jobs etc. You may come up with an absolute corker.

Acronyms Moving on to acronyms, I suppose the first thing for me to do is define what an acronym is. It's a word or phrase the letters of which each stand for another word.

Eg: DIY - Do It Yourself. Incidentally, I don't do DIY, I do GMI - Get Men In.
Which is both a rhyme and and acronym.

More examples:
GOLFER - Groing Old Looking For Early Retirement
LOMBARD - Lots Of Money But A Right Dipstick

Once again, brainstorming is the starting point. Fill a page or two with notes about the couple - names, interests, personal histories.

Spend some time creating acronyms from them. Here are a few to start you off:
WOOF - Well Off Older Folk (good if either the bride or groom has a dog)
SITCOM - Single Income Two Children Oppressive Mortgage
HUSBAND - Huge Ugly Squat Bogeyman Acquires Nubile Damsel
BRIDE - Best Ruddy Idea Dave'S Envisaged
TAFFY - Totally Affable Financially Fantastic Yuppie
BRUMMIE - Big Robust Unassuming Midland Man Into Escapology (useful if Groom has a history of being locked in places)
JOCK - Jolly Old Can Of Kippers
GROOM - Grimy Richard Organises Opportunistic Marriage

I should say that your acronym or rhyme needs to say something about the Bride or Groom which echoes what you are saying about them anyway - repeating again or adding to it in a witty way. Repetition of a theme can be very funny.

For example, after relating a story about the Groom being locked in a department store loo for 3 hours before breaking out, you can say (if he's a Brummie):
"And so you see it's true that Tom is a true Brummie, by which I mean that he is a big robust unassuming midland man into escapology."

I wish you well in your voyage of joke discovery and know that if you have bought the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets and applied my tips you will be well on the way to success on the Big Day.

Bruno Barton


Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
No part of this article may be copied, transmitted, stored or used in anyway without the express permission of finespeeches.com. The adoption of any of our RSS feeds includes with it our express permission to receive and or display our unaltered content.

Creating Original Humour, Lesson Five, Anagrams

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speech, Lesson Five, Using Anagrams

In this article I demonstrate how to create and use anagrams for a wedding speech to further enhance your armoury of humour creating skills.

Anagrams can be very funny and a well chosen one can go down a treat.

Anagrams are a rich load to tap into: anagrams of the Groom's name, the Bride's name, the Bride and Groom's Christian names, the Groom's football team , the parents names, the towns where the families live, the location of the wedding (town, venue) etc are all appropriate subjects for an anagram.

There are a couple of ways that you can create them:-

The first, the hardest, is to toy with the word / phrase / name you wish to anagramise with nothing more than a piece of paper, a pen and your brain.
The other way is to use anagram-finding services on the internet, some of these are on-line others are downloadable software.

Some of the available ones are:-
WordSmith Anagram Artist, Anagram Genius

If you search for "Anagrams" or "Anagram Services online" at a search engine you will find many online sources of anagrams. Some are simple to use as well as free but leave you having to search all the letter combinations to identify useful or funny ones.

This can be extremely laborious, and I would recommend not being caught up with such a service, and instead using more sophisticated products.

The one which I like best is Anagram Genius.

You can download a free version which is quite serviceable or pay 30 dollars or so for the Gold version which is excellent for our purposes. During the rest of this discussion I am referring to Anagram Genius, but the same methods work with any anagram service.

Please bear in mind that for our purposes an anagram doesn't have to be absolutely exactly correct - if it suits your comic purposes by all means change the odd letter - if done sparingly it is very unlikely that anyone will challenge you on this, even if they notice.

However you may well feel more satisfied by a completely accurate anagram. Fortunately it is possible to make some tremendously funny or appropriate anagrams.

This is how I do it:-

Your first step is to list the names, ideas etc which you intend to anagramise.
To achieve useable anagrams you have to try different permutations - for instance "Mark and Anne" on its own might not give the software enough to work on, but try it first and then try Mark and Anne Smith (for example), and if you don't get anything useable from that expand it a little more, eg: Anne and Mark Smith Aston Villa fans.

Try the name of the church where the wedding is taking place, the name of the reception venue, the Bride's maiden name, etc, etc

An effective anagram program will:-

sort the anagrams in order of %age effectiveness, ie best anagrams first use artificial intelligence to arrange each anagram into roughly grammatical sentences, and includes slang words (but be sure not to use undue coarse language!)

In other words it can do a lot of the 'donkey work' for you, by identifying the anagrams which are most likely to be useful.

So, plug in the name / phrase you wish to anagramise. But what are you looking for?

Ideally a connection with a facet of the Groom's / Brides personality or personal history.

Anagram examples
Here are a couple of examples taken from speeches written for Sparkling Speech (my tailored speech-writing web service) customers.

[1] I wrote a speech for one Best Man, whose best friend, the Groom, had, for mist-shrouded historical reasons, the nickname Dom. The Best Man was delighted when I shared with him the choice nugget that Dom's full name was an anagram of "warm old sniveller", and with my suggestion that in his speech he should propose a re-name to "Wos".

[2] Another customer, a Groom, was a staunch member of an Elim Pentecostal Church known for their passionate singing. Anagram Genius told me that "Elim Pentecostal Church" was an anagram of "ace tonsil temple", a fact which went down a storm when he delivered his speech.

[3] For another example, consider a Bride who makes a habit of collecting shopping coupons and is getting married at St Thomas' Church, Bournville. What could be more appropriate than to discover that she should be wooed by "voucher charms not bullshit"?

[4] A good prospect is the Groom's / Bride's favourite sporting team. Try just the first part of the name, then if that yields nothing, add the rest of the name. For instance, try "Manchester United" and if that fails, try "Manchester United Football Club", etc

[5] Using anagram creation software I have found that "Aston Villa Football Club" is an anagram of "full vocal slob battalion," "Manchester United " is an anagram of "dream stench unite", and "Manchester United Football Club" is an anagram of "accentuated run-of-the-mill blobs."

I have to say that it takes a little time to find anagrams like these, but I would say that if you have seven or eight names / combinations to search under, you'll probably be able to do them all in a couple of hours.

Anagram Genius has a couple of extra features, one of which is its archive collection of the very best anagrams created, arranged under headings as diverse as sport, TV and politics. It's well worth having a quick look to see if there's anything there you can use.

One example: "Manchester United footballer David Beckham" is an anagram of "Man, the bloke blundered! Fetch Victoria Adams!"

You can use anagram software to create entertaining aliases. For example, if your name happened to be Slobodan Milosevic and you were female, you might decide on an alias of Miss Cleo Viola Bond.

One final note on anagrams: don't overload your speech with them. I think the rule of three applies well here.

Use them sparingly, no more than three and if you use more than one try to use anagrams that complement and support each other.

And remember, a lot of work has been done for you in the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets :)

Bruno Barton


Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
No part of this article may be copied, transmitted, stored or used in anyway without the express permission of finespeeches.com. The adoption of any of our RSS feeds includes with it our express permission to receive and or display our unaltered content.

Creating Original Humour, Lesson Four, Using History

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speeches, Lesson Four, Using History


This article deals with the use of information from history to make your wedding speech humorous in a way that is linked to the people at the wedding. This can add variety and interest making your speech special.

For the effective use of history in a speech you need a source of historical facts, arranged by date of the year. This enables you to derive speech enhancing observations and humour relating to, for example, the date of the wedding or the Groom's or the Bride's birth date.

Finding historical informationFortunately there are several such sources available on the internet.

The easiest way to find one that you like is to go to a search engine and search for keywords such as:-

"Any day in history" "today in history" "on this day". These links will take you to the appropriate google results page :).

The one which I prefer is Any-day in History, available at Scopesys. I found everything that I wanted to help writing my speeches, and it was easy to use.

If you want to use this service you will have to use the link above or type in "www.scopesys.com/anyday" in full in your internet browser, because there is (currently) no link from the home page to the anyday in history page where you can select the relevant.

The rest of this article will describe the principles of using historic information, but the example methods refer to scopesys.com.

You can apply the principles using a historical source of your choice.

Simply plug in any date and three sets of information appear:
first a list of people throughout history who share that birth date, next a list of people who have died on that date (I suggest NOT using this list for wedding humour) and finally a list of historical events which have happened on that date.

Identifying useful historic material. What we are looking for is any historical information which can be related in some way to the people involved in the wedding, particularly the Bride and Groom.

For instance:-
Things that echo one or the other of their personal characteristics or interests, items which are similar to them in some way or which maybe are even totally opposite to them, or perhaps something that inadvertently speaks about marriage in a way which is interesting or amusing.

Examples - using history for humourLet's plug in my birthday (11th April) and see what we can make of it all.

[1]Scanning through the birthday sharers, we see that I share my birthday with two great cricketers, Arthur Shrewsbury, who dominated English batting in the late 19th century, and Everton Mattis, a West Indies batsman in the 80's.

Clearly with such a pedigree of cricketing excellence born on that day, how could I be anything other than a world class Test cricketer?

Unfortunately I can hardly lift the bat and have been out for a duck more times than I care to mention, So in this case I can't easily draw a comparison between myself and cricketeers from history.

If I really want to include 'cricket' in my speech (perhaps because all other members of my family are keen cricketeers) I might claim that I would be as good at cricket as the rest of the family if only Nature had not gone awry given and my share of cricketing talent to these other world class cricketeers who shared my birthday.

[2]However I can draw some comfort from another two of the birthday sharers:
Nick La Rocca, a jazz composer who wrote the classic jazz tune Tiger Rag and the pop star Lisa Stansfield were born on the same date too, which clearly means that it can only be a matter of time before I and my rock band "Rancid Rabbit" make history and reach number one in the pop charts.

There is an element of truth in this: I do write pop songs and have thought of setting up a spoof band called Rancid Rabbit, but whether it'll ever happen or not I don't know.

Nevertheless, the fact that they do songs and I do songs makes the comparison relevant. Not only were we born on the same day but we are all in the same business, without doubt we are destined for the same greatness!

You don't have doubts do you? I am being flattered by the comparison.

This approach can be a nice touch for the happy couple on their wedding day.The closer I can compare the historical information to the wedding the better the impression and the more successful the humour. But please note that in the world of creative humour, even for weddings, you are allowed to stretch the truth for comic effect. As long as you don't tell a string of outright lies, no-one will mind.

[3]Looking through history for events on 11th April and relating them to a wedding on this day, I see that it is the anniversary of Napoleon's first abdication.

Never mind what the groom's real attitude to marriage has been in previous years, you can still boldly proclaim that ....

"Clearly after half a lifetime of dedicated bachelorhood, the Groom has taken a leaf out of Napoleon's book and handed over control to someone else".

Of course if the groom has really been known as a sceptic about marriage you might build in how heartened you are to see such a profound conversion in his attitudes, and charmed you are to see how eagerly he has approached his own wedding.

[4]I also notice from history, that in 1960 on this day the first weather satellite was launched, and in 1984 the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger carried out the first in-space satellite repair.

So for the speech I can say "Looking out of the window at the weather now I think we can say it wasn't the weather satellite that they repaired!"

Obviously this only works if it is raining. If it is sunny we could say: Thank goodness they fixed it!

You may find useful comic historical snippets which you would like to use but which apply to a non-relevant date. Feel free to use them anyway. It is highly unlikely that anyone will realise, and even more unlikely that they will challenge you.

Even if they do just claim artistic licence. Alternatively if it really bothers you, just find some other historical facts and use them in conjunction with another relevant day. There is plenty of material out there!

I hope you can see my drift on this one. Given a fairly open and lateral approach to the people and events in these two listings of events from history, you should be able to find some very good wedding speech enhancing material.

Bruno Barton


Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
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Creating Original Humour, Lesson 3, Rule Of Three

Creating Original Humour for your Wedding Speech, Lesson Three: The Rule of Three

Hello folks and welcome to this lesson on how to personalise your wedding speech humour.

This time we're considering the creation of jokes using what's known in humour writing circles as The Rule of Three. This is a triple sequence which is used to increase suspense and tension with a longer build up, leading (hopefully) to an uproarious laugh at the end.

The Rule of Three has been used for centuries in creative writing of all sorts, but particularly in children's stories. For instance there's the three blind mice, the three little pigs and Goldilocks and the three bears, to mention just three (how's that for a quick rule of three!)

This device works because the audience / reader is compelled to wait for the payoff, which in the world of humour is the punchline… and not only that but is compelled to wait just the right amount of time.

Please bear in mind that the majority of your jokes should come in "singles", not "triples". But consider this: a joke in "twos" for some reason generally doesn't work - somehow the delay and correspondingly the suspense isn't long enough, and a "four" is normally far too long.

There is something about a joke set up as a three that makes it work just right. One may be funny, two isn't, four isn't, but three is. And it's generally more effective than the same joke told as a "single."

Let's illustrate this with an example. The most famous type of Rule of Three joke is the legendary: "An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were in a…"
Now I don't for a minute suggest that you use one of these in your wedding speech as they are generally outrageously politically incorrect.

A politically correct one however will illustrate my message nicely, even though it's as old as the hills. Don't worry, there'll be some brand new ones in a few moments.

Here goes:

An Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman were in a field. The Englishman said: "Look at that English cow over there." The Irishman said: "No, it's an Irish cow." But the Scotsman said: "Actually, you're both wrong. It's a Scottish cow. Look, it's got bagpipes under it."

Would this work as a single ?

A Scotsman was in a field and said: "Look, you can tell that's a Scottish cow because it's got bagpipes under it." I don't think so. So you can see that "tripling up" does improve this joke. (It's probably just as well!)

I'm not suggesting that you pepper your wedding speech with Rule of Three jokes, but certainly one would be a fine addition to the style and content of your speech, and maybe even two.

How do you create a Rule of Three joke?

First of all the third part needs to be funny; for that you need an element of surprise - set up the joke in the introduction, delay the surprise once, delay it twice and Bingo! In goes the punchline.

How about these, specially created for this article:

1. "Ellen always takes 3 hours and 3 seconds to get ready: one hour to put on her make up, two hours to choose an outfit and 3 seconds to make up an excuse for being late."

2. "Katy was driving me to work recently. We had a row and she accused me of being childish. So I got out of the car, slammed the door and caught a choo-choo instead."

3. "Teachers have been given permission to deal with classroom thugs - now they can give them a clip around one ear, a clip around the other and shove 500 volts between them."

Going from the sublime to the ridiculous is another good way of getting laughs. This is true of humour generally, but particularly with Rule of Three.

Here's an example:

Now, as many of you know, Harry runs a successful business in property maintenance, although he has always been very modest about this. This caused a slight problem recently when he designed some new business cards.
He started with "Harry Stone - Managing Director," but he thought that was too boastful.

Then he went for "Harry Stone - executive in charge of commercial property, including air conditioning and sanitation." Trouble was that was too long.
So in the end he opted for "Harry Stone, bogs and boilers a speciality!"

Well that's about all for this month. I wish you all the best with your preparations.

With your Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets you will Double Guarantee your sucess in satisfying both your audience and yourself on the Big Day.

Good luck!

Bruno Barton :)

Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com

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Creating Original Humour Lesson Two- Puns

Creating Original Humour for your wedding speeches Lesson Two

This month I'm going to start my series of blogs on joke making. On our web site you will be able to download a speech package to suit you; with the methods that I will teach you, you will be able to personalise your wedding speech with original wit appropriate to the Bride and Groom.

This month I take a look at creating puns, i.e. jokes based on double meanings. A vast percentage of all jokes fall into this category. The first step in writing a joke using a pun is to think of a word with more than one meaning.

For your wedding speech I recommend going several steps beyond that:-

Write down all the subjects and themes you can think of about
the Bride and Groom their shared interests their separate interests their history together etc. and brainstorm every single word and phrase that comes to
mind, whether it has an obvious double meaning or not, write
these down.

Then study these words for possbile puns.. Craft these into appropriate sentences I'm going to illustrate this using the subject of golf.

Here's my brainstormed list:

tee
drive
driver
driving
club
clubhouse
ball(s)
caddy
trolley
green(s)
fairway
bunker
flag
round
hole
iron
birdie
handicap
grip
stance
shank
hole in one

You may be able to think of many more, in which case why not have a go now! write down your extra words and follow along with the example.

As I say, I recommend that you go through this process for every aspect of the Bride and Groom that you can think of - by doing this you will come up with several strong ideas for jokes, and you don't need many.

The next step is to go through the list and write down as many meanings for each word, or phrases, that you can think of that use the word.

Here we go:

tee: golf ball holder, cup of tea, letter T, tee hee
drive: driver: golf club, car-driving, Minnie Driver, "drive a" long way
club: golf club to hit balls with, chocalate biscuit, social club,
golf club: club foot, card suit
clubhouse: 18th hole, clubs live there?
ball(s): golf ball, part of man's wedding tackle, dance, ball of foot,
lotto balls: a load of balls, bawl
caddy: club carrier, tea caddy
trolley: golf trolley, supermarket trolley, off-his-trolley
green(s): golf green, vegetables, ball colour in snooker, traffic light-go
fairway: golf fairway, fare way, fair weigh
bunker: golf bunker, air raid bunker, debunker, history is bunk
flag: golf flag, corner flag, flagpole, flagging (tired)
round: round of golf, come round (visit), come round (from
unconsciousness), circular, spherical,, round of pints, fat
hole: golf hole, dive, a right hole, whole, hole in wallet, polo mint
iron: ironing, cutlery, ion, steel
birdie: dicky bird, watch the birdie
handicap: golf handicap, disability, disadvantage, Andy Capp, handy cap
grip: grip on a golf club, grip on something else, get a grip
stance: stance when taking a shot, position on a subject
hole in one: one shot into the hole from teeing off, a physical hole in
something
shank: to knock the ball way off course, Armitage Shanks

And now we come to the analysis: scan down the list of twenty words and their meanings to see if a joke comes to mind.

What you are looking for is to deceive the wedding speech audience into thinking of one meaning when you actually mean the other.

My ideas follow in joke form - some are weak, but there are a few which are quite passable.

If you have ever done brainstorming at work you will know that at this stage it
is the quantity of ideas that matter! simply write them down,
do not stop to think or evaluate then - this comes later.

If you do this exercise for every area of the Bride and Groom's interests, you will probably be in a position of deciding which jokes not to use, and selecting only a few very good ones.

Clubs: I am sorry that James has decided to throw away his clubs, but
I'm delighted that in Jane he has picked up his hearts.

Driving: James was explaining to Jane at a time when she was learning
about golf, that a tee was something to hold his balls when he
was driving. She said "Gosh, BMW think of everything!"

Tee: he keeps his ball holders in a mug - it's his cup of tee.

Balls: On the fairway one day, Jane said: "James, what's that lump in your pocket?" He said "Don't worry, it's only golf balls." She said: "Is that something like tennis elbow?"

Green: James was thrown out of his first golf club for digging up the
turf and putting it in a flower pot. "What are you doing?" they said. He responded "I'm only potting the green." They said: "You fool! This is golf, not snooker!"

Hole: The eighteenth hole - you should have seen it, it was a right hole

Iron and Trolley: He knows a lot about golf equipment - you should see his 5
iron - it's a Russell Hobbs. And he's ever the radical - he was arrested when he wheeled out his new golf trolley - it was from Sainsbury's.

Handicap: I'm not sure if his handy-cap is his flat cap or his club foot.

Grip: At least all that work on his grip means he can now carry four beer mugs in each hand.

Hole in one: He took his new golf shoes back to the shop. Why? Because he
got a hole in one.

Shank: In the gents in the clubhouse last week, I saw that someone had written above the words Armitage Shanks: "aye, but nowhere
near as bad as James does!"

So I've managed to come up with some form of wit for 11 of the above 20 - odd terms. You can do the same with any subject.

You might even be able to think of more golf jokes from the above double meanings, or maybe even better ones than mine.

By the time you have done this exercise for several of the topics you identified you are sure to have a few humorous quips that closely adapt your speech to the people involved.

I wish you well with it.

I know that if you have got the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets you will have very good speeches at your disposal already; it can only enrich it further if you add some gems of your own using the methods outlined here, and over the next few months.

Bruno Barton :)


Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com

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Prepare Or Bust ? Your Choice

Wedding Speeches - Prepare or Bust!

Copyright finespeeches.com 2008

There are many different kinds of wedding speaker, including....

-The Rolls Royce, who is well oiled, almost inaudible and goes on for a long, long time....
-The pogo stick, who jumps along in fits and starts and sometimes collapses in a nervously gibbering heap !!

-The fellow who thinks he can "wing it ", and the guy who prepares for six months beforehand.

Whatever your background and your previous experience at public speaking, we at Fine Wedding Speeches can help you to excel on the day.

"It's my Wedding Speech - I'll "wing" it if I want to!"

I'm going to start off by talking about "winging it". Some people are naturally funny, particularly down the pub after a few beers. They think that giving a wedding speech is not far removed from wisecracking in their local bar: "I'll just sink a few beers and see what comes out."

Consider this: when you wing it, will you soar majestically over the mountains like a golden eagle … or will you tear around headless chicken-like in ever decreasing circles before imploding spectacularly in your beer? …

Or will you simply be a limp and totally flightless turkey?

I have known many people attempt the "winging" method. How many have I known succeed? Zero, zilch, zip all. This is an approach which always fails, unless you really are an experienced stand-up comedian - and even they "die" on stage sometimes.

You've probably seen this scenario yourself more than once: the speaker stands, looks up and in the cold light of day sees hundreds of pairs of eyes looking at him; his usual impromptu wit wings out of his head; he forgets the groom's name, his daughter's name; he starts to stammer; his knees knock and the contents of his bowels indicate their imminent desire to descend ankle-wards.

Completely humiliated, the speaker sits down, bows his head in shame and makes as sharp an exit as he can to drown his sorrows, his reputation as a wit shattered forever. But the worst thing for the speaker is that, more likely than not, his inglorious moment will probably be immortalised on videotape, remembered forever as The Wedding When Wisecracker Winged it.

Wedding Speeches Need Preparation !!

To deliver a speech of any sort requires some degree of preparation.

Mark Twain, an extremely gifted speaker, said, "It normally takes three weeks for me to prepare a short impromptu speech."

Most wedding speakers will not have the advantage of being extremely gifted, nor of being extremely experienced public speakers. Nevertheless nearly everyone can make a competent job of their wedding speech if they have the right help and follow an effective method of preparation.

Consider politicians, people who need to appear competent when addressing the public. Do they stand up and launch into something off the top of their heads? No, they have prepared an idea of the broad issues they want to talk about, the subjects they will cover, and the words they will use.

These professional public speakers frequently have an auto-cue, a lectern or other form of paper stand. They are not "speaking", they are "reading aloud". Admittedly they are doing it with animation and energy to involve and impress the audience. In many cases they have not written the speech itself, but have used a "Ghost Writer".

These practices are considered "tools of the trade" and successful public speakers of all kinds expect to use them. You can too!

The speaker who prepares his wise, witty and sincere words well in advance is the speaker who will "wow" them on the day; not only because his words will be well-chosen, but because he will have had time to practice his speech as many times as he feels necessary - in front of his wife, his mum, and maybe even bits of it in front of his mates down the pub.

Wedding Speeches Need Practice Remember the 5 P's: Perfect Practice Prevents Poor Performance.

By practicing in front of a sympathetic and constructively critical audience, you will be able to select, discard and hone jokes and anecdotes and sincerity so that you will become very confident of your material on the day.

Fear Factor? - Oh yes, been there, done that - coped anyway. Time and again, surveys have shown that people are generally more scared of public speaking than dying. You may be one of the many millions of people who are terrified at the prospect of being in front of an audience.

Believe me, I can empathise with you - up to 1987 I was one of the sweating, knee-knocking hordes myself, preparing to be Best Man for my brother Nick. Up to that point in my life I hadn't been able to bring myself to say anything when there was more than one person present, even down to cracking a joke down the pub.

If, like many people, you feel a great personal fear about your commitment to giving this wedding speech, visit your public library (or Amazon?) and read Susan Jeffers' amazing little book, "Feel the Fear And Do It Anyway". In 200 pages she will show you ways to turn your fears into confident action.

So if fear is your biggest obstacle to giving a successful wedding speech, learn how to use it as a tool to spur you to success.

What transformed me? I joined a public speaking club - International Training in Communication (ITC).

At my first meeting I was asked - non obligatorily - if I would like to stand up and improvise for two minutes on the subject of pets. Like a condemned man I slowly walked to the lectern. As a family we had hamsters, budgies, goldfish, tortoises, cats and dogs. Could I remember their names, their foibles, their lives, their deaths? No. Terrified, the sweat dripped down my face like Chinese water torture. It was, for me, like going over a trench at the battle of the Somme. But, however haltingly, I did it. And I returned the next week, and the next.

Six months later at Nick's wedding, people weren't just congratulating me on my speech, they were asking where they could book me! And now, people do book me - I'm a speech coach, an after-dinner speaker, a storyteller, and I've even had success as a stand up comedian.

How much better would it be for you if your Somme experience occurred months before the wedding rather than at the wedding itself? Why not contact a speakers club?

Three websites follow:
The Association of Speaker's Clubs:

www.the-asc.org.uk
Toastmasters International: www.toastmasters.org
ITC: www.itcgb.org.uk and www.itcintl.com

If you feel that such full and in-depth preparation is not for you, or if you don't feel inclined to train yourself up to near-professional standard for just one event, don't despair. At Fine Wedding Speeches you will find plenty of guidance, tips and advice which, if followed diligently, will ensure success on the day.

Now, having found out how to make your wedding speech, if you want the ultimate in proven, step by step, surefire sucess with your wedding speech then the Master Class Wedding Speech Secrets is for you !!

Get It Now At !! www.FineWeddingSpeeches.com

Wishing you fun preparing your speech and massive success on the day,

Bruno Barton..:)

Copyright 2008 FineSpeeches.com
No part of this article may be copied, transmitted, stored or used in anyway without the express permission of finespeeches.com. The adoption of any of our RSS feeds includes with it our express permission to receive and or display our unaltered content.