The people who give wedding toasts during your reception are essential to your day and especially your wedding film. As a filmmaker, I use the audio from these toasts to help build the tone and emotion throughout your videos. With my 14 years of experience, I’ve seen quite a few wedding toasts and learned what does and doesn’t work. Here are my 5 top tips on how to have the speakers at your wedding give the best toast!

https://youtu.be/X2hbH_hZca4

1. Choose The Right People

This is one of the most underrated tips you’ll read about! Not everyone’s Maid Of Honor or Best Man is the best public speaker. I’ve seen people feel obligated to give a toast after being given these roles, but that doesn’t necessarily have to be the people or the only people who give toasts. You know your friends and family the best, so feel free to seek outside of your Maid Of Honor or Best Man if you feel they’re going to be too nervous publicly speaking in front of all your guests.

Giving a toast on a wedding day is a big responsibility, so make sure the people you choose can handle that and not be black-out drunk for your reception and will prepare something meaningful to recite.

2. Prep Your Speakers

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to weddings where the guests can’t hear anything. Whether they prepared a toast or not, it might be their first time using a microphone to speak, so it’s helpful to give them some pointers. I had a wedding once where the bride sent everyone giving a toast a video on how to speak into a microphone, and it worked out great! I made a video of my own about this which you can check out here.

Little things like knowing where to hold the microphone, what to do with your hands, and where to stand, are all important things that are often overlooked. They lead to poor audio quality during your reception and poor audio quality for your wedding film.

3. Keep It Short And Sweet

When your toast is too long, your guests start to lose interest. I had a wedding where someone gave a toast for 32 minutes! At that point, the bride and groom weren’t even paying attention.

I’ve spoken with other vendors about this, and we agreed that under 5 minutes is a sweet spot for the length of a toast. Talk about the important things, don’t ramble on, and everyone will love it! This also goes with my first tip on making sure you choose someone who will be responsible enough to prepare their toast.

-Austin

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Hi, I’m Austin, a wedding videographer based out of NYC.

Want to learn more? Feel free to check out some of my wedding films here: https://cinemarollfilms.com/

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