Dave Spikey – How To Recover Your Speech After A Mistake
If you want to read Dave Spikey’s previous wedding speech columns then have a look at our wedding speeches page.
I’m doing a father of the bride speech later this year and every time I read it through I start crying. What should I do if I completely lose it when I’m reading my speech or if I just lose my place or forget what I was going to say?
Pull yourself together, are you a man or a mouse? Where’s the Dunkirk spirit? Where’s the stiff upper lip? Where’s the moral fibre? Where’s……. Look stop crying just because you don’t know the answers.
Yes I know it’s an emotional time, your little girl, your innocent sweetheart is leaving you for this, let’s be honest, slightly weird bloke (there is something odd about him that you can’t put your finger on isn’t there?) who frankly isn’t good enough for her but you have to take some responsibility after putting that “Last Girl Before Motorway” sign in your front garden.
So what to do if you start crying during your speech? I don’t know if I’m going to be much help because I’ve never cried on stage, died on stage yes, but not cried. I do cry though, not very often but enough. The last time I cried IF you don’t count the MACE spray (A massive overreaction on her part) was last month when “Cash in the Attic” came on and I couldn’t find the remote.
I’m frantically searching behind the cushions and the presenter woman is droning on, “Beryl needs to raise a thousand pounds to visit her sister in Australia who she’s not seen for thirty years” and I’m shouting “Thirty years ! A thousand pounds?! SAVE UP Beryl, its not a fortune is it? Here’s a tip – Stop buying all that shit! How much Clarice Cliff does one woman need? Have you not figured out why your sister went to Australia thirty years ago and hasn’t been back? To get away from you and your freaky Toby Jugs. She probably isn’t in Australia , she probably told you that but she’s moved to Burnley.”
Before that I cried (and did a little impromptu jig) when I had a wee on an electric fence once, I cried when Henry died in MASH and I usually shed a tear when I pull a nose-hair out or get my knob caught in my flies because that is an exquisite acute pain! The zip has trapped a little “U” shaped flap of skin and the pain is intense and you have a dilemma , do you zip up or zip down?
So maybe think of one of these things if you start to cry and think “I must stop being such a soft sod – any one of those things that happened to Dave is worse”. I read once that if Formula1 drivers are entering a bend at 120 mph and they suddenly want to sneeze they punch their leg very hard and the sneeze goes away so maybe if you feel the tears coming you could pull a nose hair out, or trap your knob in your flies and blame them on that?
If you go blank on stage look at your notes! You will have notes right? You should have notes. If you have notes but are struggling to focus on them because of the tears buy yourself sometime by having a joke in reserve – Just one joke , you can remember one joke yeah? Say that you’re sorry for showing so much emotion but you can’t believe what a wonderful young lady your daughter has turned out to be, bearing in mind the things that you made her do as a child. Things that, in retrospect, no child should ever be asked to do – plastering , plumbing, re-wiring the extension.
OR probably better, make it something along the lines of passing on the secret to a happy marriage (relationship) – mention that a shared sense of humour is most important and that you often see “Must have GSOH” in dating agency ads. Say how true this is but how it can be unpredictable, how that one day you could say something to your wife (partner) and she’ll laugh but say something similar the next day and ……Nothing!
Illustrate it with an example – say “We were in bed the other night, I was reading a book and she was reading a magazine when she suddenly put the magazine down in such a way that you knew you should have gone to sleep! She said “I’ve been thinking”, and you thought, “Oh shit” and she said, “I’ve decided that I want to be cremated” and (pause for thought) you said, “Alright , get your coat” (Mime getting out of bed to make it come to life). You should get a laugh which will fill the gap and give you time to get back on track.
Or you could just get a hankie out, wipe your eyes and apologise for being so emotional – my guess is they’ll love you for it and it won’t be at all embarrassing. I’d rather you didn’t, I’d rather you trapped your knob in your flies obviously. That would be brilliant and you would become a legend.
If you want to read Dave Spikey’s previous wedding speech columns then have a look at our wedding speeches page.
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