One of the keys to a successful Father of the Bride speech is capturing the attention of the guests from the start and hooking them for the rest of the speech, so your welcome needs to be strong. Remember that on the night you should be yourself, and part of achieving this successfully is to write your speech as you would speak it. You don’t need to get this perfect to begin with as you’ll be polishing your words later, but try and keep it in mind from the start.
As already mentioned, you start with a welcome and finish with a toast, and that’s what we’re doing now. Since these don’t need to be overlong and are quite straightforward you should be able to complete this within 15 minutes at the most. You can take the suggested welcome below and adapt it for your own use, or write something of your own:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’d like to thank you all for coming today and celebrating the marriage of [my daughter] to [the groom]. I’d particularly like to thank those of you who have traveled a long way to be here today, such as [mention the people who have traveled the furthest and from where].”
Traditionally the Father of the Bride pays for the wedding, but these days this often isn’t the case. If anyone else has contributed you should thank them now.
“I think you’ll agree with me that the wedding has been wonderful and all this wouldn’t have been possible without the generous contributions from [name everyone who has contributed financially, starting with the most generous].”
That’s it, your welcome is now complete. It doesn’t need to be perfect yet, so we can now move on to the toast. Once again you can use the example toast below, or use it to write your own:
“Ladies and Gentlemen, I now propose a toast. Please raise you glasses to…. the Bride and Groom.”
That’s it, you’ve now written your welcome and the toast, as well as notes for the main part of your speech. Next we’ll go back to those notes and flesh them out so that you’ll have completed the first draft of your Father of the Bride speech.
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