Weddings can be stressful to plan, organise, and participate in, from picking venues to tasting cakes, trying on items of clothing and, writing speeches. Seeing other grooms do their speeches with ease long before I had mine made me think it wasn’t too difficult to accomplish, all you have to do is write something about your new wife, how you’re looking forward to being married. So when it came to my wedding I didn’t give it much thought. I was too worried about not messing up the first dance and not being nervous during the actual reading of the speech to care about its contents. Little did I know there are some very important do’s and don'ts of groom speeches.

The first draft of my speech, which I’m pretty proud of, was a bit of a short sermon on unconditional love, a speech more to show my future father-in-law how spiritual I am. I showed it to Hannah with pride to see what she thought, here is the speech verbatim;

I’d like to say a big thank you first of all to everyone who is here today. Those who travelled long distances from all parts of the country.

Thank you to the bridesmaid’s groomsmen, those who decorated,  those who helped organise and pay for the wedding, none of this would have been possible without you.

Also thank you to those who have helped us prepare for this journey we are about to start, whether it’s been coming to your homes and going through passages of scriptures, or the odd comment here and there based on past experiences. I’m fully aware one can never truly be ready for marriage, but I believe the spiritual, practical, and financial guidance you all have given and will give us, will help us strengthen this union of friendship and love.

I fondly remember applying for universities during sixth form, calculating my UCAS points based on my predicted grades to see what unis I could get into. A group of my friends were doing the same, but a handful of students, mainly art ones weren’t affected by the need to work anything out. They didn’t seem worried at all, and when I asked they told me they had something called an unconditional offer, meaning no matter how well or badly they performed, no matter if they missed every class till the end of the term, they were guaranteed a place at a university. That’s the type of love I believe a husband should have for a wife or vice versa, unconditional love.

It is easy to stay together and have conditional love for one another when things are going well; when lovely words are exchanged, when gifts are being bought, but the test is to still have love when times are tough; when horrible words are being exchanged when gifts are being thrown across the room. Guaranteeing love no matter what is a very difficult to achieve in one’s own strength, nevertheless as Christians we believe the best way for us to love unconditionally is to look to one who has provided the ultimate example of unconditional love, Christ.

I won’t take any more time talking about the great sacrifice of love that has been made on behalf of all of us there are people in the room who can do that much better than I can, but I will end by saying this. It is because of unconditional love we are saved, it’s because of unconditional love is why we save others, and it’s unconditional love (amongst other things) that will keep our union going for our lifetime.

Let’s raise our glasses to unconditional love.

To my surprise, she wasn’t impressed with it, at all. I needed to thank more people, talk about how we met and mention her as my beautiful new wife. I had only been to a handful of weddings before but I never really took notice of the format to which the groom speeches were in, I didn’t even know there was one, however, a few minutes of research proved me wrong. I looked at a few example speeches online and they all had the same pattern. Thanks needed to be given to the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, the father of the bride as well as the bride’s family, mention of the bride herself, and all sprinkled with a few clever jokes. I wrote a completely different speech which went through a few revisions.

Okay, so firstly I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who made it here today. For those who travelled long distances from all over the country, and those who live less than half an hours drive away.

Thank you to those who helped organise, coordinate and decorate the church and this building, everything has been wonderful.

I also want to acknowledge those who wanted to make it but were unable to make it, I won’t mention names as there is a chance I will miss someone out, but if you are in contact with them, please let them know they were acknowledged.

I’d like to once again thank Jonathan and Helen not only for accepting me into their wonderful family, not only for all the help you have given us throughout the year but also for bringing up your daughter in the knowledge of Christ and letting me have her hand in marriage.

I would also like to thank my parents and those involved in my upbringing in some way for making me the person I am today. They have done a tremendously good job in bringing me up, I have learned so much from their words and even much more from their actions, I only hope I could be as much of a blessing to my children as they have been to me.

And last but not least, I would like to thank my new wife who looks absolutely stunning today, she has put a lot into making sure today is a success, from picking the ice cream flavours to sewing her own wedding dress I am truly grateful for her organisation

Hannah has honestly been the best thing that happened to me last year and this year too and, a lot of things have changed or been put in motion since we decided to get married, for example, the purchase of a flat which is possibly the most grown-up thing I’ve ever done, the regular scramble to find a new place to visit and a new restaurant to eat at each week. And of course, coming up with new games that only make sense to us. Such as; are you sitting up or lying down, which is a popular one over the phone when we’re tired. Do you remember a time when? Where we have full conversations in another accent, usually a northern one. Going into an empty restaurant, apologising for not making a booking and asking if there are any seats available, at last, but not least, am I playing a video game, on my laptop, or giving you my undivided attention over the phone, which is Hannah’s personal favourite. As you can tell, we’re in for an exciting marriage.

Anyway, I’ll start wrapping up before I bore you further. Thank you, bridesmaids and all of Hannah’s friends here for the support you’ve given Hannah over the years.

Since the speech was written and finalised in short notice I didn’t have time to practice and memorise it, so on the morning of the wedding I came up with a sort of ‘mind map’, an A4 paper, borrowed from the hotel I was staying at. It’s pretty much a series of hand-drawn images I came up with that helped me remember what I wrote down, here’s what it ended up looking like.

If it were down to me I would say the groom’s speech should be in whatever format it needs to be in, in fact, any wedding speech can be written in whatever way the speaker would like, but as it’s not down to me (which is probably a good thing). I would say to anyone else who finds themselves in a similar predicament, do what your future wife says, especially if you don’t have much knowledge on what a speech for a wedding should sound like. All jokes aside I’m super thankful for the prayers and help I had from both families on this wedding, the help from my wife, and friends who participated, most of all to God without whom none of this would be possible.

Ollie