Presentations During Your Wedding

At some weddings, you’ll see where there are people who will get up and do a reading for the happy couple. Sometimes it’s a religious passage; other times it’s just a special message that the couple wishes to have read to show their love for each other. And other times, they’ve been asked by someone else if they can do a reading at the wedding to show what they think about the couple.

Having something read during the ceremony is a way to be more inclusive if you either have a lot of friends who you can’t add to the bridal party, or if you have a small bridal party and still want some of your friends to be a part of it. The couple can decide on what they want read, or can allow their friends to write whatever they want to write and present. Of course, the danger there is that you might worry someone will write something inappropriate, but those are the chances you take when you aren’t trying to control every aspect of what’s going on in your wedding.

Probably the smartest thing for couples to do is come up with things they want read on their own, then parcel it out to prospective readers. That way, they make sure everyone is on point, and then it’s easy to plan the order of what’s being read for maximum effect.

Of course that also puts the onus on you to make proper choices for a reading. When you’re thinking about having readings, whether you’re going to be reading something to each other or having others read from the podium, you have to put a lot of serious thought into it, and not just because you might be writing it also.

You need to decide how long you want your presentation to be. You need to decide what you don’t want to say, things that may be no one else’s business. You have to take into consideration where you’re going to be getting married and what’s acceptable to them. You have to take into consideration the age of people who might be at your wedding. And you want to take into consideration the flow of your wedding, because the last thing you want is to have your wedding bogged down by too many or inappropriate readings.

One final thing you need to consider is if the people you select, including yourself, are capable speakers when the time comes. Many people get stage fright if they’re not used to speaking in front of others. The same goes for the wedding couple, who might already be under a lot of stress and now have to worry about not only reading something, but being heard by people in the room. It’s not as easy as it looks on television.

Still, readings can bring something special to a wedding if they’re set up right.