How to Make Your Wedding Speeches Shine on Camera

Wedding speeches are full of laughter, tears, and heartfelt moments — but how do you make sure they shine on video? Whether it’s your best friend’s toast or your dad’s emotional words, capturing every nuance on camera is essential to reliving your big day.

• Choose the right spot where you're going to talk from: Are you going to be well lit, or have a strong small light source making you look spooky! Are you visible, do you have space to move or gesture, can everyone see you?

• Practice makes perfect: Ultimately every speech is better if it's from the heart and on the moment, it will just come out more genuine rather than reading a shopping list.. However!... you're going to be nervous...so if you know your key things you need to say..if you've said them enough times that it's now like your favourite song in your head, you know all the words...so you just need to belt the passionate bits out..... so basically what i'm trying to say is... practise practise practise your speech...so you know the main gist of it... and so if you get nervous you know what to fall back onto. And this way you can take chances and speak from the heart at the time...knowing full well...if you get tongue tied you can jut fall back on your speech you've said a thousand times.

• Mind the microphone: Most venues will give you a mic ...but what they either don't mention, or don't make clear enough to you ...is that those mic's are pumping out what you say on speakers around the room ...very loudly... rather than just having a lot of speakers on low volume so everyone can hear, it's usually about 2 -4 massive speakers... if the mic you are using can hear what the speaker is saying... it will then say that again through the mic...and again and again..which is how you get feedback..or the painful shrill noise. - Practise microphone etiquette, if it's too loud hold it close to your chest to muffle it, and speak quietly. If it's too quiet... put the mic very close to your mouth like you're giving it a smooch. ...... or you know just project your voice and trust that for your video, the audio from your lapel mic will sound so much better.

• Consider pacing: Just think about all the great speakers out there. The one that comes to my mind all the time is Barack Obama, how he will say what he wants to say.... and then pause, so you have time to take in what he's just said, and it gives what has been said...... weight. There's a great Ted Talk by Will Stephen about how to sound smart during your Ted Talk... it's meant for comedic purpose...but it's so right. Try and learn from that.

• Tips for laughter and emotion: Like the best movies....the best speeches balance emotion with...essentially banter. You can start with something informative, then get deep, make it real, "She got me through the toughest time of my life, and I can never truly thank her enough for that" ...... and then end on a bit of banter "but enough about spending that weekend with her parents" .... you get the gist. I'm sure yours will be much better.