Toasting Timeline

We had 4 total: 2 at the beginning on dinner (best man and maid of honor) and 2 towards the end (my mom and his dad). They also kept their toasts short (3-5 minutes tops).

We had my dad give a toast when everyone sat down before the first course. And our best man and maid/matron of honor gave theirs during the third course. Everyone kept them under 5 minutes. It worked well for us!

We gave a welcome speech and had a prayer before dinner, the rest of the speeches were at the end of dinner.

We are having our family and friends give the speeches after the head table has finished eating. So for us that is about a half hour after dinner has started

We did speeches after dinner. We had 3, both of our MOH’s and my dad. They each spoke for around 2-3 minutes and that seemed to be a good time limit.

We had our grand entrance, then first dance, then toasts, and then our first course was served.


What I actually WANTED to happen, was for the first course to already be on the table when people entered (it was just a salad), then to do toasts right away, then first dance, and then open up the dance floor.


However my venue coordinators totally ignored my requests (despite having gone over the timeline numerous times) 🙄 It ended up being fine how it was, though I would’ve preferred the way I requested.

No one seemed bored or anything... we had 3 people give speeches—my mom, best man, and MOH. Mom and best man talked for about 4 mins each, MOH took about 3.

Immediately following the wedding party introductions into the reception, which ended with B&G's first dance, there were a total of 4 "speeches," as the salad course was being served. FOB gave a welcome on behalf of all 4 parents, the MOH's gave a joint speech (they wrote it together), the 2 BM gave a joint speech (but they each just talked, not particularly well coordinated). Then, the B&G stood, and G spoke for the both of them. Each of the first three were limited to a MAXIMUM of three minutes (so the pair of MOHs and BM, each PAIR had 3 minutes), and were instructed to give "toasts" NOT "speeches." They were all awesome. B& G (with G doing the talking) responded, thanked everyone for being such an important part of the day, and G said very sweet things about his B (his was probably more like a minute). All done in well under 12 minutes, as guests were being served their salads and started eating. (I've taught public speaking at the college-level for over 25 years, ask people to KEEP IT SHORT and give you DJ the power to keep people on track and move things along. I've been at a wedding where every freakin' person even remotely involved gave a "speech" and it was AWFUL...probably lasted at least 45 minutes. Bridesmaids were crying to the point where you couldn't really understand what they were saying. It was awful and very uncomfortable. Don't let that happen -- it's very bad from a guest's perspective!)

We only had 2, our moh and best man. We had a short reception and I didn’t want to spend a huge chunk of time on that. So we kept it short and sweet and it was perfect.

Our venue coordinator suggested doing two right before dinner and two after. Basically between the salad and main course and between the main course and dessert.

We are likely only doing two toasts (MOH and BM, no parent speeches) so those will come after dinner. We'll greet our guests and say a quick acknowledgement/thank you between the salad and dinner courses.

I think we will most likely have around 5 scheduled toasts but knowing my family, some of them are definitely going to want to say something. We're going to have to find a way to put a reasonable cap on speeches.

I had mine I believe before cake cutting and before all the tossed