Wedding Toasts

The ceremony was beautiful! Now its time for the reception. Food, dancing, fun, thank yous and toasts.

Your guests have come out to join you on your special day and you should take the time to say thank you. It is also an opportunity to thank those who have not only supported you during the wedding planning but throughout your life. It does not have to be a long speech, it should be a sentiment from the heart. You can decide whether you will give the toasts or whether your husband, or maybe even both.

Hold your glass in your hand, look around to acknowledge everyone and begin. Giving some thought and possibly writing down what you would like to say is definitely important, it will help you to have your thoughts organized and a lists of all of those you wish to thank. If however you happen to forget all of the individuals that you wish to thank, be careful with starting to list names beyond immediate family to avoid hurt feelings. If you will be using a quote from a poem or book, rehearse it so that when you speak it flows naturally and seems unrehearsed.

Do's and Don'ts

* Do choose a story general enough for every listener to understand

* Don't include slang (unless it's in such wide use that everyone will get it): you're thanking all your guests, so you need to include everyone.

* Don't embarrass anyone (at least not in a mean-spirited way) and forget foul language.

* Don't give a toasts if you are drunk, it's a horrible idea ( you should not get drunk at your own wedding, anyway). It's a toast, not a roast

* Do try to limit your speech to two - three minutes. Speak slowly and clearly

* Do keep it simple. It's nice to tell a quick, illustrative anecdote, but launching into anything too lengthy makes you hard to follow

Technical checks:

Be inspired by the Masters, integrate their words into your own speech

Here are some starting lines, resources provided by The Knot

("As Shakespeare said..."; "In the words of the poet Nikki Giovanni..."), relating them to bride and groom. The idea is to get the crowd to feel the universal significance and emotional impact of the words.

1. May your love be like the misty rain, gentle coming in but flooding the river.

-- Traditional African

2. In so much as love grows in you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.

-- St. Augustine

3. We never live so intensely as when we love strongly. We never realize ourselves so vividly as when we are in full glow of love for others.

-- Walter Rauschenbusch

4. To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.

-- Lao Tzu

5. Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

6. One word

Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:

That word is love.

-- Sophocles

7. Night and day you are the one,

Only you beneath the moon and under the sun.

-- Cole Porter

8. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet.

-- Plato

9. Love is a fire that feeds our life.

-- Pablo Neruda

10. Love is friendship set to music.

-- Anonymous

11. Marriage is like a golden ring in a chain, whose beginning is a glance and whose ending is eternity.

-- Kahlil Gibran

12. The strongest and sweetest songs

yet remain to be sung.

-- Walt Whitman

13. We are each other's harvest; we are each other's business; we are each other's magnitude and bond.

-- Gwendolyn Brooks

14. In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

-- Marc Chagall

15. We love because it's the only true adventure.

-- Nikki Giovanni