Welcome once again to Bruno's Column.
This article deals with the use of information from history to make your speech humorous in a way that is linked to the people at the wedding. Ths can add variety and interest making your speech special.
For the effective use of history in a speech you need a source of historical facts, arranged by date of the year. This enables you to derive speech enhancing observations and humour relating to, for example, the date of the wedding or the Groom's or the Bride's birth date.
Finding historical information
Fortunately there are several such sources available on the internet. The easiest way to find one that you like is to go to a search engine and search for keywords such as:-
- Any day in history
- today in history
- on this day
The one which I prefer is Any-day in History, available at Scopesys. I found everything that I wanted to help writing my speeches, and it was easy to use. If you want to use this service you will have to use the link above or type in "www.scopesys.com/anyday" in full in your internet browser, because there is (currently) no link from the home page to the anyday in history page where you can select the relevant.
The rest of this article will describe the principles of using historic information, but the example methods refer to scopesys.com. You can apply the principles using a historical source of your choice. For a list of some others click here
Simply plug in any date and three sets of information appear:
- first a list of people throughout history who share that birth date,
- next a list of people who have died on that date (I suggest NOT using this list for wedding humour)
- and finally a list of historical events which have happened on that date.
Identifying useful historic material
What we are looking for is any historical information which can be related in some way to the people involved in the wedding, particularly the Bride and Groom. For instance:-
- Things that echo one or the other of their personal characteristics or interests,
- items which are similar to them in some way
- or which maybe are even totally opposite to them,
- or perhaps something that inadvertently speaks about marriage in a way which is interesting or amusing.
Examples - using history for humour
Let's plug in my birthday (11th April) and see what we can make of it all.
[1]
Scanning through the birthday sharers, we see that I share my birthday with two great cricketers,
- Arthur Shrewsbury, who dominated English batting in the late 19th century,
- and Everton Mattis, a West Indies batsman in the 80's.
Clearly with such a pedigree of cricketing excellence born on that day, how could I be anything other than a world class Test cricketer?
Unfortunately I can hardly lift the bat and have been out for a duck more times than I care to mention, So in this case I can't easily draw a comparison between myself and cricketeers from history.
If I really want to include 'cricket' in my speech (perhaps because all other members of my family are keen cricketeers) I might claim that I would be as good at cricket as the rest of the family if only Nature had not gone awry given and my share of cricketing talent to these other world class cricketeers who shared my birthday.
[2]
However I can draw some comfort from another two of the birthday sharers:
- Nick La Rocca, a jazz composer who wrote the classic jazz tune Tiger Rag
- and the pop star Lisa Stansfield
There is an element of truth in this: I do write pop songs and have thought of setting up a spoof band called Rancid Rabbit, but whether it'll ever happen or not I don't know.
Nevertheless, the fact that they do songs and I do songs makes the comparison relevant. Not only were we born on the same day but we are all in the same business, without doubt we are destined for the same greatness!
You don't have doubts do you? I am being flattered by the comparison. This approach can be a nice touch for the happy couple on their wedding day.
The closer I can compare the historical information to the wedding the better the impression and the more successful the humour. But please note that in the world of creative humour, even for weddings, you are allowed to stretch the truth for comic effect. As long as you don't tell a string of outright lies, no-one will mind.
[3]
Looking through history for events on 11th April and relating them to a wedding on this day, I see that it is the anniversary of Napoleon's first abdication.
Never mind what the groom's real attitude to marriage has been in previous years, you can still boldly proclaim that ....
"Clearly after half a lifetime of dedicated bachelorhood, the Groom has taken a leaf out of Napoleon's book and handed over control to someone else".
Of course if the groom has really been known as a sceptic about marriage you might build in how heartened you are to see such a profound conversion in his attitudes, and charmed you are to see how eagerly he has approached his own wedding.
[4]
I also notice from history, that in 1960 on this day the first weather satellite was launched, and in 1984 the crew of the Space Shuttle Challenger carried out the first in-space satellite repair.
So for the speech I can say "Looking out of the window at the weather now I think we can say it wasn't the weather satellite that they repaired!"
Obviously this only works if it is raining. If it is sunny we could say: Thank goodness they fixed it!
You may find useful comic historical snippets which you would like to use but which apply to a non-relevant date. Feel free to use them anyway. It is highly unlikely that anyone will realise, and even more unlikely that they will challenge you. Even if they do just claim artistic licence. Alternatively if it really bothers you, just find some other historical facts and use them in conjunction with another relevant day. There is plenty of material out there!
I hope you can see my drift on this one. Given a fairly open and lateral approach to the people and events in these two listings of events from history, you should be able to find some very good speech enhancing material.
Bruno Barton
Some sources of This-Day-In-History information
- The History Channel.
- Scopesys.
- Those Were The Days.
- On This Day.
- Today in History.
- Encarta - On This Day.
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