I’m the maid of honor in my sister’s wedding, next Saturday. As such, I am going to do the champagne toast. I’ve never written a toast of any kind, and am not sure how to go about doing one.
I want it to be witty and funny, not too cheesy and emotional, but with a bit of sentiment in it of course. Any advice on writing a toast? I’m just looking for general advice, and maybe some things to avoid.
Thanks!
First of all, this will be the easiest audience you’ll ever meet. They yearn to laugh at your jokes. They yearn to Aaah at your sappy references. You’re likely nervous, but when you do it, you’ll find you really can’t fail.
The best of these involve personal things about the couple that everybody knows, or interesting things about them that they’d like to know.
Standard things that always go over well:
For other ideas, you can look up what happened in history on the wedding day and work off of that.
Well, I looked up the history, and the best thing that happened that day I can find was the day Orson Welles fooled the country into thinking we’d been invaded by aliens…not sure how to work that into the wedding speech, but it’s interesting 
thanks! I googled “wedding toasts” but a lot of the sites I found were more “here, buy this pre-written toast” than “here’s some advice to write your own.” I am NOT buying a pre-written toast, though I wish I had started writing this earlier . Maybe I"ll pick up a book on it over the weekend.
you really don’t need a book. Just think about what you know about them, and start trying to think about what’s funny, or cute, or romantic. Right down everything; don’t worry about whether it’s good or not, then pick 4 or 5 of the best things.
As to the history thing (and you don’t need to do the history thing, just an idea to spawn ideas):
Corny? you bet. but like I say, this is one comedy club where you can’t help but get laughs.
oh, and the next day is halloween. Say they’ll have to celebrate their anniversary every year in costumes.
I’ve always liked the idea of starting a wedding toast with the opening from Pride and Prejudice.
Then working in how the good fortune in this case is actually securing the wife. Just be careful to not make it sound like he doesn’t deserve her.
Hey, you could always just wing it. I was best man for my old roommate, and put off writing a toast for months. Then, it was time, and I still had no toast. So I just made it up. Apparently, though, I had put more thought into it than the maid of honor.
Talking about how you met your friend is always good, and giving a nice good anecdote about your sister when you two were younger is a good way to get a laugh and be somewhat sentimental without going over the top. That’s what I did, at least.
As has been said, this is an easy audience. They want to hear the sweet sentimental stuff. My niece’s FIL started his toast by telling about how he and his son used to take a metal detector out to look for treasure, and then said that the bride was the greatest treasure son had ever found. My niece (another one), doing the toast at her brother’s wedding, related and incident from their childhood and then went from that to how they get along now, and that she’s happy now to have the sister she’s always wanted. They were sweet and not too emotional and everybody smiled.
Whatever you do, don’t follow the example of the maid of honor from another wedding we attended recently. “I was (the bridegroom’s) first girlfriend.”