It is perfectly natural to want to incorporate funny material into your wedding speech and the path most people will choose will be to introduce some jokes.
However there are some pitfalls you should be aware of if you are going to use this strategy.
Are You a Skilled Joke Writer?
By nature unless you are a skilled joke writer most jokes will have been created by someone else. We have all heard someone tell us a joke that we have heard before. In fact if you are like me when that happens you want to blurt out the punch line before they end the joke. Well this is even more compounded in a speciality speech such as a wedding speech. Watch a few You Tube videos and you will see what I mean.
But that is not the only reason you shouldn't put jokes in your wedding speech. Now that is not to say that your speech should be devoid of humour. That would be a dull speech indeed, but we will come to that later. For now let's consider why telling jokes could be bad for your speech.
How Good are You at Telling Jokes?
First of all most people can't tell jokes...well. We have all see it before. A friend comes rushing into the room, " Oh I have just heard this great joke, I must tell you" They start to tell you the joke, and then they come to the punch line..."Oh I missed a part out" or "Oh no I meant to say...before I said..." you get the picture. They screwed up. You see there are so many places you can screw up in telling a joke. You have to get all the parts in the right place to make it work.
But a joke is not just about getting all the words in the right order... timing... voice inflection...tonality...enthusiasm all have to be correct for it to work. No wonder it takes years for comedian to perfect their craft.
Even if You are Good at Telling Jokes
Now even if you are really good at all these things, let me ask you this question. Have you ever done it in front of an audience before? Do you think you might be under a little pressure while delivering your speech?
What About Nerves?
Even if you learn how to control your nerves, all the focus will be on you, and when we are under pressure it is easy to forget what you are going to say. Now I can tell you from personal experience that when I deliver a speech, and I tend to deliver most speeches without any notes, that I will invariably forget something. However no one will know because they did not know what I was going to say. But when you do that in a joke everyone will know. Not only do you need to memorise it, but you have to the get the words in exactly the right order... never a good thing for a speaker.
What if No One Laughs?
Now suppose you ignore my advice and go ahead and tell a joke. What if no one laughs? What will you do then? When someone starts to tell us a joke we expect to laugh. But we will only laugh if we think it was funny.
A joke is a bit like a murder mystery. We all want to know how it ends. "Was it Col Mustard in the study with the candlestick or was it Rev Green with the rope in the library?"
This all creates anticipation. So we expect to laugh. But what happens if we don't find it funny? Now imagine being on the other end of that and no one laughs. What do you do now? How do you recover? Do you think this would put extra pressure on you? You bet it does?
I know, that's why I don't tell jokes anymore from the platform anymore. Even though I am quite good at telling jokes, because I get voice inflection, energy and pacing right. I now reserve them for private company.
Make Sure it is Relevant
Also I see too many speakers tell jokes that are in no way related to what they are talking about. A good speech has flow and needs transitions to connect all the part together. It is through the use of transitions that I am able to deliver my speeches with little or no reference to note and that's what I want for you also.Transitions will allow your speech to flow like a beautiful symphony.
Yet you want part of your speech to be funny. So what is the alternative? You do this through the use of properly constructed stories and then you learn how to uncover the humour in the stories.
==funny story==
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