Wedding Speeches: Bride Speech

Modern wedding ceremonies reflect both the respect for traditions and love to different innovations. Correspondently, the genre of wedding speeches preserves its traditional elements such as father of the bride’s speech, bridegroom’s speech and best man’s speech and tends to be flexible enough to include new speakers. Modern wedding ceremony optionally contains a bride’s speech as an innovative but highly popular component. Professionals argue that a wedding speech is more than a specifically structured presentation of wishes and attitudes to the event. Historically, the traditional varieties of wedding speeches are based upon certain scenarios and distinct roles: “main speakers – father of the bride, best man and so on – have speaking roles with huge traditions attached to them (father dotes on daughter, best man humiliates groom etc.” However, a bride’s speech is still free from the load of common expectations and the bride can use both her initiative and intuition while preparing her appearance as one of the wedding key personas. To this end, a bride is granted an unmatched right to regulate (1) her order among the traditional speakers and (2) the length and the content of her speech. In fact, the very emergence of a bride’s speech as a new genre of wedding greetings shattered previously stable frames of the ceremony. Correspondingly, new combinations of “messengers” and messages were created and became increasingly popular in the USA and all over the world. To day, a bride can even speak first in case her father is not available. This means that her speech would reflect some of the elements characteristic of the opening greeting such as welcoming the guests and thanking them all for coming. A bride’s final toast may be a figurative bridge to her fiancee’s speech. The emergence of a bride’s speech as an important part of a wedding ceremony provides a valuable source for a number of creative and symbolically loaded organizational solutions. For instance, a newly married couple can stand together and produce their common speech piece designed as two monologues or a dialogue. Modern specialists tend to recommend this pattern as a highly logical one. Another option for a bride and a groom is speak separately and show different sides of the same themes such as love, life values, etc. Besides, in their related wedding speeches, new spouses can present a kind of cross characterizations of their families. Finally, a bride may choose to speak after the best man as the last speaker. Such an appearance can of course be very memorable but professional wedding organizers argue this might be rather difficult for highly emotional women. Although the content of a bride’s wedding speech is not practically bound to certain traditions and patterns it still conforms to certain conventions. It is possible to mark out the following typical constituents of the bride’s speech: (1) expressions of sincere gratitude; (2) a personal variant of the love story; (3) a new toast. According to the wedding etiquette, a bride should thank guests who came to congratulate their couple, and bridesmaids who helped handle wedding preparations. A particular part of a bride’s speech should be dedicated to her mother as a close friend and true supporter. After this, a bride can tell a poetic story of the relationships with her future husband (how they first met, how their affection emerged, etc.). A bride’s speech ends up with a new toast to attendants. A bride’s speech is evidently more than just a new colorful detail, which enriches the wedding and makes it lively and emotional. Presenting wedding speeches, modern women declare their new right to show that their marriage is free and personally justified. While greeting guests, a bride can speak about her vision of the family, trace her role in the relationships with her spouse to be and prove that she is a mature personality with her own likes, dislikes, and an independent circle of acquaintance. As far as a bride’s speech integrated into the modern wedding ceremony, sample speeches emerged in popular magazines and on the Internet. Sure, wedding speeches samples are not usually taken for granted but we dare argue they will definitely contribute to the establishment of a new tradition.