Sometimes, you get asked to give speeches in public. Some are more intimidating than others.

[DFW]

I've spoken before members of the Washington press, members of Congress, the board of a third world central bank (in their language!), even before a group including a sitting member of the Supreme Court. I've played my music before a sitting President (Ford) and an ex-President (Clinton).

But THIS time, I've been asked to give a speech that I find more than a little daunting.

My daughter has asked me to give the main speech at her wedding. What do you say about the girl whose birth I attended and helped raise--and in front of people who all know her well, and all have different expectations of what I should say?

All that other stuff, I could handle.

As for this one....all I can say is GULP!!

(at least I have half a year to think about it.........)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. Congratulations, my dear DFW!

The Father of the Bride!

I am thrilled for you. I know you'll do it and do it well. I've seen you in action, and you are smart, poised and articulate.

6 months is plenty of time to get ready.

[bigbrother05]

2. Just say what's in your heart, that's all they'll expect

[DFW]

3. But I don't HAVE 5 hours.........

Otherwise I would.

[bigbrother05]

4. Yea, editing will be the real problem

[lastlib]

5. My advice (as a trained speaker):

1) Carefully consider the nature and significance of the occasion;

2) Throughly analyze the interests and characteristics of the audience;

then 3) PANIC!!


.


(I actually built that into a speech I had to give with very similar trepidations!)

All I can say is, "GOOD LUCK!" and keep us posted!

[DFW]

8. One and three--no problem. Number two--ahh, there's the rub

The interests and characteristics of the audience. Right. They will include (in no particular order):
Germans in their mid thirties
Germans in their eighties and nineties
Americans born between 1952 and 2019, Hawaiian to Virginian and points in-between.
Russians
Israelis
Japanese
Half-Japanese


Professions:
Former vice-director of the World Bank
Lawyers (no guns, some money)
Social workers
Unemployed
Retired
Should-be-retired-but-won't/can't (me)
Project director for DARPA
Travel agent
German architect
Austrian Techie
CEO of the world's third-largest auction house
Leader of a Dallas Modern Dance troupe
and I don't even know what the Russians and Israelis do for a living.

I'd have to spend six hours just covering half the interests and characteristics of the audience, and that's limiting it to 100 people as it is!

[Danascot]

6. Your first line could be

"What do you say about the girl whose birth I attended and helped raise--and in front of people who all know her well?"

or something to that effect.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

7. I don't have the experience you do

but am an experienced speaker, including a daughters wedding. My input- short and sweet with a great toast to close with along the lines of - “Here’s to marriage, that happy estate that resembles a pair of scissors: ‘So joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet punishing anyone who comes between them.'”

[DFW]

9. I like the scissors bit

Although as to moving in opposite directions--they grow more together every day. My daughter's husband-to-be even wants to take HER (i.e. my) name instead of the other way around!

[Lionel Mandrake]

10. I have been the father of two brides at their weddings,

but my duty on each occasion was only to escort a daughter up the aisle. I was expected to be seen and not heard, like an obedient child of ages past. It wasn't too difficult an assignment.

[DFW]

11. You got off easy.

My daughter has no intention of letting me off the hook.

She's getting married in some castle her sister picked out for her in the Taunus-Weinberg region north of Frankfurt, so if I blow it, there's a dungeon on the premises for wedding speakers who bomb........

[Lionel Mandrake]

12. Well, as Nietzsche said,

"Was dich nicht umbringt macht dich stärker." Or something like that.

[DFW]

21. I'm not worrried about becoming staerker

Last edited Sat Mar 9, 2019, 10:13 AM - Edit history (1)

It's the getting umgebracht I'm wary of.

*edit--title space won't show umlauts from a German keyboard

[Lionel Mandrake]

32. Stage fright won't kill you.

What's the worst that could happen? The audience might rip your clothes off and love you to death, but I've never heard of that happening. Sometimes a speaker is booed, and on rare occasions attacked physically, but that's not going to happen either.

I'm guessing that you first typed "stärker" in the title space, and it came out as "strker". Annoying, isn't it? Anyway, you found a workaround.

I've seen people put back umlauts that were never there, e.g., "Göthe" for "Goethe".

[NNadir]

13. I suggest you give the speech in idiomatic Lithuanian or the Finno-Ugric language Seto.

This way no one will know if you screw up.

It's gotta be easier than speaking to Gerald Ford.

[DFW]

15. I didn't have to give a speech to Ford

Just say "hi" and continue to play my music. He was a pretty nice guy, actually. I almost wanted to say, "what
is a nice guy like you doing in a Party like this?" but I didn't know how the Secret Service guys would take it.

[NNadir]

17. Well, don't feel bad. I once shook hands with Richard Nixon.

He leaped into the crowd of people at his campaign rally where I was standing between SDS protesters and some people from my parent's church wearing "Nixon's the One" buttons.

I was there purely out of curiosity. It was at a shopping mall, and I'd just gotten my first driving license and went there to be teenage mall rat.

At the time I was apolitical entirely, with a very superficial knowledge of history. My family were members of the lower middle class. My father was a fairly, for the time, right wing Teamster/laborer - his pension disappeared with Jimmy Hoffa's body - and my mother was a swing voter who, from time to time, infuriate my father by telling him she "canceled" his vote. I think in 1968 though, she voted for Nixon.

I wasn't old enough to vote at the time but Nixon shook my hand as he moved through the crowd shaking everyone's hand he could reach. What I remember was that he was wearing a ton of make up and had a forced fixed smile. I don't recall a word of his "speech," which may have lasted 5 minutes and was drowned out by shouting protesters.

I never met people with too much political power, although I have met some very, very, very impressive scientists at the highest levels of science. That, of course, was later in life. I knew nothing of science then.

[DFW]

18. I never met Nixon, but my dad knew him well

Last edited Sat Mar 9, 2019, 10:56 AM - Edit history (1)

There was one funny incident in mid or late 1969. Over the new year, my dad was in Cancún, Mexico, and noticed at the swimming pool of his hotel that the guy next to him Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. My dad went up to him and said he was a journalist based in Washington, he recognized Trudeau, and that he wasn't going to bother him once because he was on vacation. Trudeau was immensely grateful, of course. Fast forward a few months, and there was some big deal going on at the St. Lawrence Seaway that my dad had to be at. Nixon and Trudeau were there, too. Nixon knew my dad from the days when he was VP. My dad was along for the Russia trip with the so-called "kitchen debate." Nixon saw my dad, and wanting to be the big shot host, said, "have you met the Prime Minister of Canada?" Nixon obviously expected a negative answer, and was at a loss when my dad and Trudeau said, "of course!" and shook hands like old friends. Nixon shuffled off, muttering.

I know all of one Nobel Prize winner in Physics (Bill Phillips), who is one of the nicest guys you could ever want to meet. Other than Bill, I come up short in the science category.

[TexasTowelie]

31. Did they have most pits back then?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

14. Will this be in Germany?

[DFW]

16. Yes, at a castle in a wine-producing area north of Frankfurt

Her sister, the one who lives in Germany, is setting the whole thing up. She now lives in that area, and commutes into Frankfurt when she needs to. Since my girls grew up in Germany, and a lot of their friends still live here, it was picked as a compromise (of sorts). The elderly people coming are either German, Russian or Israeli, and would have had a harder time traveling all the way to North America, especially my daughters' last surviving grandparent. My wife's mom will be almost 92, and her health is somewhat fragile. She has definitely taken her last intercontinental plane flight, and that was almost 2 decades ago. She is mentally all there, though, and would rather die than miss this. The girls still adore their "Omi (Grandma)," and figured "neither of the above" was a better solution.

[Heddi]

19. I know a little german

[gratuitous]

20. "For all the good, and for all the bad,"

"She's all yours now, Mate." You might want to use the groom's name in place of "Mate."

[DFW]

22. I'm pretty sure the "mate" in question wouldn't have it any other way

She's the one in blue:

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[gratuitous]

23. Lovely

I fretted over my wedding vows for MONTHS, hit on what I thought was a good idea, then went back and forth for as long again. Finally decided, "You know, I thought this was a good idea once upon a time. I'm going to trust myself and my own judgment." It was a good idea:

[DFW]

30. I'll let her and her man fret over the wedding vows

I have my work cut out for me as it is.

My wife and I never even wrote our own wedding vows. She hates speaking in public anyway, and in the case of our wedding, she would have made hers in German, mine and my brother's would have been in English (we had a double wedding), and his wife's would have been in Japanese. No one present would have been able to follow them all anyway.

[MicaelS]

24. Definitely throw in an anecdote or two about....

How man times you:

(a) changed her diapers

(b) fed her

(c) bathed her

[DFW]

25. I had planned on a little of that, but she'll disown me if I spend any time on it.

I think she wants to hear about how we always encouraged both her and her sister to forge their own paths and make their own decisions, and, now that she has made the most important decision she'll ever make, how she will probably want us to shut the f*ck up from here on in.

Until she has her first child, that is, in which case I see my wife running over to the States every two weeks for two years.

[MicaelS]

26. Yes, you can easily over do that.

Just think of all the miles your wife be racking up. I bet you have quite a few yourself.

[DFW]

27. I stopped counting

I just got back from Madrid an hour ago (ran down there yesterday). Have to be in Holland Monday, Belgium Tuesday, back in Spain (Barcelona this time) Wednesday, back on Saturday for a friend's birthday party Sunday, and then off to who-knows-where after that. My wife wants to celebrate my birthday (the following Tuesday) here in Germany, so I have to try to figure out how to play hooky for that day.

I'm not thrilled with the idea of my wife making transatlantic trips every 2 weeks anyway. She is strong, but has already had cancer twice and she will be 67 this year, too. If she lowers her resistance levels, she could well leave herself vulnerable to round three, and maybe cancer will go for "third time lucky."

[MicaelS]

28. Best wishes to you and your family.

I always enjoy your posts.

[DFW]

29. Thanks for that!

Your sentiments are not universally shared, and thus appreciated.