Wedding speeches – Get on the mic

There’s one golden rule about wedding speeches that people tend to overlook, and that is: if they can’t hear you, there’s simply no point. For some reason a sizeable chunk of people have an issue with using a microphone, as if it somehow sends out a message that you’re a bit of a knob. However, I have been to far too many weddings where nobody could hear the speakers. This becomes a pointless exercise if you’re making the groom speech, however, it becomes life changing if you’re making the best man speech. You could have the funniest best man speech ever written, but if people can’t hear it, they can’t laugh, and delivering a really funny speech to complete silence, would send the hardiest best man into emotional breakdown.

Wedding venues come in all shapes and sizes these days, you can happily celebrate your wedding in a chicken shed, a teepee, some random field or an underground bunker, and they all share one thing in common: they all have dreadful acoustics. As soon as you speak the sound travels straight into a dense damp brick whirl, or gets carried on a swirling summer breeze, and you might as well be reading out the wedding breakfast menu.

People tend to feel self conscious about holding a microphone, as it suggests that you’re some kind of semi professional presenter, when really you’re a very nervous guy who usually plies his trade in IT Support. However, it can become a great personal prop, and at the very least it gives your hand something to do. The biggest problem all presenters have is what to do with the massive bunches of bananas that usually masquerade as their hands. This solves it.

I went to a wedding a few years ago where the middle aged guy who was acting as best man for his son, thought that using a microphone was an insult to his virility, and it was questioning his status as a fully grown man not to be able to make himself heard naturally. I will never forget him being offered to microphone, and dismissing it with a sneer. Well, unfortunately I was one of the few that could hear him, and quite frankly it was a lucky escape for the vast majority of the room. For everyone else – if you’ve got the chance to use a microphone, then grab it with both hands…not literally.