Make The Toasts A Highlight of Your Weddings -- and Eliminate Mic Drops

Wedding toasts need not be a crapshoot. The tipsy Maid of Honor who drops the F-bomb; the Best Man who tells the sexual jokes about the bride; the uncle who is “just gonna wing it,” and rambles on with no end in sight.

The Groomsman who does the dreaded mic drop.

We’ve all seen these things and more, because when we hand a live microphone to someone at a wedding, what happens next is out of our hands.

Or is it?

To some extent, there are things beyond our control, but we can “stack the deck” to make the desired outcome more likely. One of the best ways to do this is by contacting in advance anyone who will be speaking on the mic at the wedding. This can be done via phone, email or text, but our greatest success occurred by targeting millennials and their parents in the manner they each prefer to communicate: parents by phone, millennials electronically.

We can “stack the deck” to make the desired outcome more likely.

Helping speakers to understand their role and responsibility is the key, so we offer a Toasting Tips PDF to our couples. The difference has been dramatic. The toasts are more on point, they’re appropriate and a highlight of the evening instead of the white-knuckle ride they can be without doing the prep.

The PDF covers how speakers can open and close, specific ideas for topics, staging and blocking, ideal length of toasts, the alcohol factor, notes vs. iPhone reading or winging it, etc.

Here’s an example:

And of course, we discuss the “mic drop” and the real cost to our clients ($500) for doing so.

The key is getting your clients to look at and use the information. After a lot of experimentation, we discovered that the PDF had a greater chance of being read when it’s sent by the couple to anyone who’ll be speaking (as well as directly from us).

The key is getting your clients to look at and use the information.

We’ve mostly solved the problem of the unprepared, “I’m just gonna wing-it” guy, the not-as-funny-as-he-thinks-he-is guy, the drunk girl and the rambler. It’s not a fool-proof system, because they’re making some pretty great fools these days, but it’s in your power to make the toast one of the highlights that your clients and guests will remember, for all the right reasons, forever.

For a free copy of our Toasting Tips, just go to The 1% Solution Facebook Group and request it there.

Randy Bartlett is the owner of Premier Entertainment in Sacramento, California. He’s been DJing professionally for 30 years, and used to do open-mic standup comedy nights and even considered pursuing it professionally. You can find his The 1% Solution package of videos here.

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