One question I always ask when consulting upon a wedding is “when do you plan to make the speeches?” , often followed by “And how long do you think they will be?”.

On the list of wedding planning priority’s, speech timing is not high on most people’s list. However, it is often an important and overlooked aspect of your wedding evening. Consider this. The average three course wedding meal lasts around two hours. The average length of a wedding speech is around 10 minutes – that’s a quarter the length of the meal, and will have a big impact on the running of your wedding evening (even more so if the best man plans to recount the groom’s entire life story).

I recently managed a wedding where the bride and groom were adamant they wanted one speech between each course. Not a problem I said. The father of the bride duly spoke after the starter course. A fairly short speach of 5-10 minutes – the main course was duly served on time. Now came the groom’s speech. “How long until desserts are to be served?” asked the head chef “10-15 minutes, perhaps a little longer” I responded. 40 minutes later, the groom was still speaking, and my head chef (incidentally also my boss) was not a happy chap! The groom finished his speech shortly after, and before we had time to get the desserts out of the ovens, the best man had launched into his! Whether the excitement had got the better of him, or whether they had just forgotten he was meant to be speaking after dessert I do not know. What I did realise very quickly was that his speech was going to last even longer than the grooms (his brother – long speeches must run in the family!). And so, after a further 50 minutes, we duly served dessert.

What is the point of this story, I hear you ask? It is not that long speeches are bad at weddings – incidentally it was one of the funniest best man speeches I had heard in a long time – it is that the timing of your speeches can have a serious impact on the timings of your wedding. Due to the 1 hour 40 minute wait between mains and desserts, the wedding guests were getting hungry again, and the chef’s blood pressure had gone through the roof (try coordinating 3 different desserts, all with different cooking and prep times to be ready at the same time, when that time gets changed by an hour and a half!).

In my opinion, the two best times for the speeches are: Before the meal has even started – this works particularly well at marquee weddings on nice days when the speeches can be made outside perhaps with the help of a small PA system. OR (and in my opinion the best) after desserts and teas and coffees have been served. That way, there is no kitchen angst, guests have had their fill of food for the afternoon, and everyone can concentrate intently on the speeches rather than on when the next course is coming out!

And remember - if you are a best man or groom and are reading this blog – if your speech is going to last a long time, please please please, let your wedding manager know!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 10:10 pm and is filed under Wedding Catering. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.