An important ingredient to your special day will be the Wedding Toasts.

Traditionally, people make a toast at a wedding in order to give thanks or introduce people who are important to the couple and who have assisted the couple in making their wedding dreams come true. They are an opportunity to put feelings into words and to express the collective feelings of everyone there.

Your friends and family won't expect you to have become a professional speaker in order to give a toast at your wedding, but they will expect you to have given your toasts some serious thought. This might seem like a daunting task to most people but I can assist you in writing a toast which best expresses your emotions, towards your partner, your bridal party and friends or family.

Why not contact me with your ideas and we can pen something that truely expresses your emotions about your special day.

Toast Tips

Whether you say a traditional wedding toast or compose an original, raise your glass with your right hand. In addition, be sure that the glass is held straight from the shoulder. When toasting first began, it was not unusual to find a sword, dagger, or other weapon in the right hand, or concealed in the clothing, and the traditional toasting position proved that you had come in friendship.

The clinking of glasses is a tradition rooted in earliest human history: people have always made a noise, like the ringing of a bell or the clinking of a glass, to frighten away evil spirits.

Note that a toast should always end with a formal indication to the guests to alert them and tell them what to say; for example, "Please join in a toast to the happiness of Jack and Jill. Jack and Jill!" If you are the recipient of a toast, you do not stand, raise your glass, or take a sip of your drink, but you do thank the toasters or at least smile and graciously nod. You are not obliged to propose a toast in return.

Examples of some traditional toasts are listed below:

Toast to the bride:
Made by the best man, or a friend or relative.

Toast to the bride and groom:
In recent years, this has all but replaced the toast to the bride.

The groom's response:
This should include a few words to his bride, thanks to whoever made the first toast, thanks to both sets of parents and a toast to the bridesmaids.

The best man's response:
The best man thanks the groom on behalf of the bridesmaids. (Occasionally the bride will follow the groom's response with some words of her own. It then falls to the best man to thank the bridesmaids.)

Others:
A few words from an usher or particularly close friend.

Toast by the father of the bride:
On behalf of his wife and himself, he can thank everyone for attending and indicate that the festivities may now begin.