Preparing a toast for anyone at a wedding can be a scary thought for a lot of people. The great thing about being a maid of honor instead of a best man is that you probably have a broader range of things that you can do within your speech. Even though I would tell a best man that it is okay to show emotion, most of the time that is not what is intended. For the maid of honor, it is something that is not uncommon and is certainly socially acceptable within most weddings.
For this reason alone, if you are an emotional person I would highly recommend starting out with something light hearted. It will perhaps at least get you moving in the right direction throughout the speech. Assuming you have one or two you want to deliver, they will be less funny as more and more tears fall down your face and the parents begin crying with you.
Once you get the humorous stuff out the way, you have to find a good way to go from humorous to sincere. You should really think about how you want to do this. Look at comedians and realize that there are often pauses from one story to the next. Words or phrases like, “Okay, but on a serious note..” are not things that shouldn’t be used. In fact, I would encourage you to use something like that to break your stories or speech up and make it easy for the people in the crowd to follow.
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