SN editor bombs in Cleveland wedding toast

I knew it was over when the DJ who had handed me the microphone only 30 seconds earlier slid it out of my sweating hand and yelled into it, "Let's have a little respect."

It wasn't my delivery擁t couldn't have been my delivery, because I simply wrote the toast down on three sheets of paper and began to read it in my usually charming-nervous-sincere-and-borderline-emotional way. At several occasions in the past, this delivery method has made people laugh and cry so hard the roof leaked.

And it couldn't have been the content, either, because nobody could hear the content over the din of the boozy crowd that milled about the lobby of the Palace Theater in downtown Cleveland, where the reception was held. (Eileen was right; as I've told her, the only difference between my adopted hometown of Chicago and my former hometown of Cleveland is that, while Chicagoans measure their lives by their heart attacks, Clevelanders measure theirs by their DWIs. "Yeah, I got married right after my second DWI. �")

But the trouble wasn't the crowd, primarily. The trouble was預nd I share it only because it was instructive to me and I think it may be instructive (if only as a reminder) to other speechwriters and speech makers.

1. The venue. Theater lobbies are not designed for one to be heard from one end of the cavernous thing to the other. Quite the opposite. The band sounded like it was playing in the men's room. How could I have expected to be heard, even when I muttered, into the microphone, "This is a disaster."

2. The tyranny of the casual. All weekend, I was trying to get people to tell me who was giving toasts and who wasn't, what order in which we were giving them, at what point in the reception would we be giving them, etc. And everybody just waved me off. Why? Because toasts are supposed to be spontaneous, dummy! I felt like saying葉o the bride, to the groom, to the father of the bride, to the mother of the groom and to anyone else with any planning responsibility�Well, it's too fucking late for spontaneous, because I've already spent three evenings and a six-hour car ride down I-80 writing and rewriting this goddamned thing. So how about you spontaneously tweak your imbecile nonthinking on the proper nature of toasts and help me do a little planning here? But I didn't. And I should have.

3. The bullheadedness of the speaker. By the time I arrived in Cleveland, the wedding itself seemed to me merely A Prelude to My Toast. I was full of anxious thoughts of me謡hat I, as the best man and the only professional writer in the crowd, would be expected to say. Though I knew this was happening at the time, there was nothing I could do about it: My thoughts of wanting to deliver A Great Toast to My Best Friend simply crowded out my ability to soak in what should have been obvious: That this occasion, this venue, this crowd was not meant for a long and thoughtful toast. It was meant for an, "I love you Julie!" bellowed into the microphone, a la Van Morrison or Benito Mussolini.

One last thought, and a greatly reassuring one: It's impossible to really screw up before loving friends who know you well容ven when you really screw up.

As soon I realized no one was listening溶o, when I realized no one would ever傭e listening to my toast (despite the fact that a dozen people told me afterwards that they were running around trying to shush people), I cut it short, loudly reading the last two lines (they won't make sense to share here but those who heard them at this reception understood). Then I smiled up at the groom and the bride. I laughed and raised my glass, with love様ove made humble by fresh humiliation.

And so it all turned out beautifully. As we all knew it would.

But what a heavy sweat in the meantime.