As we know, South Asian weddings are all about the “wow” factor – with their popping colours, movie set backdrops, exciting entertainment, and hundreds of guests – and these days, speeches are adding something extra special to proceedings.
Friends, family and the couple themselves are all grabbing the wedding mic and adding even more love and laughter to the day – as this collection of vids proves.
Traditionally, male members of the family will do most of the talking, but as with most things, this tradition is changing with the times and more women are stepping up to speak.
It’s still best practice to respectfully begin with the couples’ parents, but after that, the rules can be relaxed and anyone from an embarrassing uncleji to the bride’s best mate might want to say a few words. Ideally, the speeches should be rounded off with some words from the bride and groom themselves.
Although a ‘more the merrier’ approach is kind of lovely, South Asian wedding speeches tend to go on longer, with reams of thank yous to get through, so some organisation of the speakers might be necessary.
If you’re delivering a speech at an Asian wedding, you can expect a large audience. With hundreds of eyes on the stage, it can be a rather intimidating experience, so we advise plenty of planning and rehearsal.
Every wedding speech needs a big old dose of genuine sentiment but first on the agenda is winning some belly laughs from your audience. Ratio is really important here – we’d say aim for 75% humour, 25% sweetness. Far too many speeches get this round the wrong way!
Most South Asian weddings remain somewhat conservative so, while gentle mockery of the bride or groom is absolutely fine – expected even – keep it tasteful and with the broad range of guests’ age groups and sensibilities in mind.
If you can get past the wobbly mobile phone camera, this dude is a character who knows how to tell a story. He also gets the quotient of humour to sentiment spot on.
A wonderful example of two cultures figuring the moment out together. This rather sweetly funny, family friendly speech seems funnier in Gujarati! We love the way the best man uses expressive body language to interact with the people he’s addressing. He’s also a great smiler.
Father of the Groom Speech
While we wouldn’t necessary advise a twenty minute long speech which details the minutiae of your life with the groom, we do have a soft spot for this loving father’s seriously cool and beautiful tribute to his son at his gay wedding. His honesty and openness is infused with humour, as he gives a voice to the blessing of parenthood.
If that father of the groom speech had you going ‘awwww’, you might want to watch Vaibhav and Parag’s wedding highlights in full technicolour:
The Bridesmaids
This trio of gorgeous bridesmaids do a great job of reminding everyone how amazing and loved the bride is. We appreciate the way all three keep their speeches concise and on point, and the inclusion of quotes and slightly irreverent marriage advice is a nice touch. However, we’d love to have heard some cheeky anecdotes about the bride. No one is that perfect.
This guy’s speech has it all – confidence, anecdotes, great sound quality, well-rehearsed, smooth-talking and yet… it’s a bit intense right?
Something gives us the impression he’s used to delivering marketing pitches. We do like his concluding remarks though: ‘if anything goes wrong, screw it, just be happy’.
The Best Type of Best Man Speech
There’s really no getting away from best men reading their speech off their phones. It’s all good, as long you make the effort to mostly learn it first.
This guy comes across very natural, adlibbing and pausing in all the right places. He also gets the balance right between honouring his bromance with the groom and saying lovely things about the bride.
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