Turning to a Ghostwriter for a Personal Toast

How long would it be before Hallmark gets in on the action and takes over the whole thing and start selling postcards with speeches for each and every occasion. Hallmark I love you.

I've been a communications coach for 30 years now and have helped many client with toasts, eulogies and the like. I will offer direction and some word smithing but I will not ghostwrite for them. Unless you are gifted and/or a trained professional at reading scripts, you will never deliver a ghostwritten speech this personal as well as one you created yourself.

Keep it short, from the heart and no anecdotes involving bodily fluids (except tears) and you'll have a winner without spending a dime.

If we don't feel embarrassed offering pre-written gift cards to our loved ones, then I don't see why we should be embarrassed getting help from a speech writer for a toast.

We get to choose whether we like the sentiment in the card, and we get to choose whether we like the toast, and suggest revisions.

And the product is less dumb when someone with talent for words composes it.

I want to know where to get the futon cover in the picture with the women from Vow Muse. :)

As a fellow real estate lawyer (who admittedly has public speaking experience, including extemporaneous wedding toasts), I'd be reluctant to hire someone who supposedly drafts complex documents all day but does not have the ability to compose something as simple as a wedding toast.

Potentially lucrative options: 1) Hiring a stand-in to read a client's toast, and 2) Providing a "personal" apology to the host for delivering a canned tribute for a milestone event in the host's life.

It is gratifying to learn that communication is recognized in this realm at least for the art, craft, and science it really is. Expertise matters!

John C. Lammers, Ph.D.
Professor
Director, Health Communication Online Master's of Science Program
Department of Communication
University of Illinois
3001 Lincoln Hall mc456
702 South Wright Street
Urbana, Illinois 61801

I once worked for a Fortune 100 company, and among my duties, I wrote speeches for our top executives, primarily the CEO. Once, however, my skills were put to the test when a divisional president called me into his office and said he needed remarks drafted for a presentation the next day. I asked about the audience, and he replied, "my daughter is getting married and I need to say something nice about her and her groom."

That was it, as far as direction. He even wasn't quite sure how old her daughter was, and although he knew the couple had met in college, he did not know what his daughter majored in (or the groom, for that matter).

I turned in what could only charitably described as inspirationally vague words but as far as I know, everything went off without a hitch.

I just did that for a doctor who had to deliver a toast to a wedding of his close friend in India at some fancy hotel. He still gets complements for his speech.

Here are my tips:
1) If you are on the groom side, make the bride the star of the show.
2) Get everyone involved especially the family, key relatives, friends and the rest of the people attending.
3) Bring up things that are funny but not embarrassing since you will embarrass yourself.
4) Slow it down and have fun
5) Don't read it. This does not work.
6) Keep it to 2 to 3 minutes. This is the hardest thing to do once you have a mike in hand. I have a saying, "more words you use, more people you lose."
7) Keep revising till the end so it is contextual and looks like you are giving it extemporaneously.

This is a high stakes speech so don't wing it.

No matter how wonderful the ghost written speech is, it must be delivered in the speaker's own voice. A good ghostwriter, which we've got several of here, elicits from the subject everything needed to allow him or her to make the words their own. And in no small part because the talented ghostwriter designed it that way.

Kinda lame, imo. If you can't generate honest emotion in giving a toast to your friends/colleagues, etc.... sit down and let someone else do it instead.

Everything in the world can't be controlled by a PR flack and fake emotions.

I'm a wedding speechwriter in Australia and I often have clients tell me they feel like they're cheating for hiring me. The fact is not everyone is a wordsmith - for the same reason not everyone is a good cook or handy man, but everyone deserves to give a great speech on one of the most important - and expensive - days of their (or somebody else's) life. So if you're struggling to find the right words, get help and don't feel bad about it!

For those needing examples of both great and horrendous wedding speeches, watching or rewatching "Four Weddings and a Funeral" should be compulsory viewing. More hilarious and/or cringeworthy moments would be hard to find and would be instructive for any attempting this delicate task.

Another missed opportunity. Twenty years ago I ghostwrote the kicker for a friend whose father was getting remarried to the single mother of a young son. He later told me people told him they loved it: "I'm not losing a father, I'm gaining a brother." Aw!