You’ve done everything you could do to help the bride, you have endure it all; from midnight tears, dress-related panic attack to childhood-friend-turning-bridezilla and now, you’ve come to the last honorable step: the maid of honor speech. While its is a great honor being asked by the bride to give wedding speech - she couldn’t asked you becoming her maid of honor if you aren’t her best and most trusted friend- you must make sure that your speech could be delivered with hitch, without overstepping the boundaries and being deliver at its best. Believe me when I said that it is not an easy task.

• Write a draft for rough structure and speech outline long beforehand. Think all the best and wonderful things about your best friend and write them down in paper. Find some most memorable experiences you have encountered, either new or old.

• Write the outline for the speech and then butchered them down to 3-5 minutes that is the length people for effective wedding speeches. Give the most emotional and sentimental and tear-jerking moment for your speech and make it your personal quest to make the guests shed a tear or two.

• And add a sprinkle of humor here and there; give the guest opportunities to have big laugh and relax from the emotional parts.

• Take a breather at some points and let the guest absorb you speech; give heme some time to reflect. You won’t look like monotonous robot this way and even more it give uou a time to breath and calm yourself down, if a panic attack decide to strike.

• Don’t wave your hands or make any other strange hands movement too much during your speeches. Put them on your side when you speak as it tends to distract the audience from your speech. Necessary hand movement is okay but over abundance will make it like you try to joke through your speech and it tends to ruin the sentimental atmosphere.

• As you speak, maintain an eye contact with all the audience. One good way of doing it is by moving your eye contacts from one person to another slowly among the audience. But make sure that you never retaining on someone’s eye for more than three seconds at any time.

• Keep notes of your point of speech to help you remember important parts. But please don’t read your speech from it; it is not enjoyable if your speaker eyes glued to the card instead of the audience. Memorize instead and practice in front of mirror at least a month before the wedding day so you could remember and master it.

One of the things I could recommend if this guide isn’t helpful enough for your standard is to have a guide book which tells you the ABC of wedding speeches might help. It might sound vain, but it is your best friend wedding, having extra cost for a speech book is hardly unacceptable. And well, who know, one of your other friends might ask you to be the maid of honor for her upcoming wedding.

I personally recommend Wedding speech For Maid of Honor.

It is one of the most comprehensive guides which tell you the basic of speech delivery a. And not just advice to overcome your stage fright, this book also gives you guidance and example of at least 20 completed speeches you could modify for you to create one’s own speech.