10% of couples now issuing wedding speech guidelines

QHotels has revealed insight into couples' attitudes towards wedding speeches... with surprising results 

As QHotels continues its search for Britiain's best wedding speech in the 2017 Wedding Speech Awards, the hotel group - now managed by Redefine|BDL Hotels - has unearthed some interesting statistics. 

Conducted by Wonderful Wedding Venues from Redefine|BDL Hotels, the survey revealed how couples feel about the speeches before the big day.

40% of newlyweds admitted that the content of speeches was a cause for concern on their wedding day with 1 in 10 confessing to handing out rules to speech-givers. A further 5% demanded to hear all speeches before the day.

Inappropriate stories from the past and offensive content were the top reasons cited for giving couples pre-wedding day nerves, with 14% worrying that the father of the bride would say something either emotional or embarrassing, 14% afraid that the best man would be rude or offensive and 2% nervous about the bridesmaids' speech.

The research also found that we remain traditionalists at heart, with 72% of speech-givers delivering their speech in a solely spoken form while the remainder took a more unconventional route, opting for PowerPoint presentations, props and performances to aid their story-telling. 

And here's a fact to bear in mind when the bets begin to be placed... 86% of wedding speeches had a combined duration of 45 minutes or less.

John Stuart, chief operating officer at RBH, said: “Our latest research has helped us to understand how couples prepare their chosen speech-givers, and what they experienced from the speeches themselves (summarised in the infographic below). We hope that it will inspire couples planning their big day and give them a glimpse into what really happens when it comes to one of the most highly-anticipated parts of the day.”

To view the speeches in the 2017 QHotels Wedding Speech Awards and vote for your favourite, visit www.facebook.com/QHotels/ or follow @QHotelsgroup on Instagram.

Images: Sansom Photography