13 Dec Get your Wedding Roast right! The Dos and Don’t’s of a perfect Roast

In today’s world of YouTube and Instagram, potential brides and grooms-to-be have access to dozens of examples of what a great wedding ‘should’ look like – setting the bar higher than ever before. Knowing that your guests are going to be tweeting, Facebooking and Instagramming your wedding leads to pressure to do something that hasn’t been done before, or to do something that everyone is doing, only better.

Wedding speeches have come under the spotlight as couples realise that guests want entertainment and not just boring recitals of common speeches. This has led to the popularity of the roast – a light-hearted ribbing of the bride or groom – that the audience is more likely to enjoy.

Of course as with any speech, there is a fine line between humour and horror and when you are basing your speech on teasing someone you can easily cross the line if you aren’t careful. As someone who has MC’ed and entertained at more weddings than I can count, I have come up with a few pointers to make sure your roast goes down well.

So if you get asked to deliver a wedding speech and want to go the roast route, make sure you keep the following pointers in mind:

• Don’t include anything you wouldn’t mention in front of an employer – whether or not you have any work colleagues in attendance, steer away from the rude and raucous stories and keep things clean instead. This includes avoiding jokes about the bride’s spending, the groom’s beer chugging abilities or both parties’ college antics.
• Focus on habits, not features – Even if you might make the joke with the bride or groom in private, jokes about physical features, income and family members are best avoided. Instead of focusing on things they cannot change, rather focus on the bride and groom’s funny habits and quirks.
• Do unto others – This is the simplest and easiest way to vet the contents of your roast. Would you be happy if anyone made the same joke about you? If not, let it go.

Follow these pointers and your roast is sure to go off without a hitch. Remember you want your audience laughing WITH the wedding couple and not AT them!