Add Humor to the Occasion

We’ve all been there. In the audience, at a special occasion, watching someone step up to the mic to deliver a toast or tribute. A well-meaning soul whose speech, unfortunately, goes badly awry.

A best man at a wedding, perhaps, who launches into a risque riff in front of Nana and Papa Joe. Or a maudlin parent who talks on and on, and then some more, while you cringe, and pray the appetizers are on their way.

Carol Leifer has been there too. The longtime stand-up comedian saw a wedding toast bomb so badly it inspired her to write a book. Aptly titled How to Write a Funny Speech … for a Wedding, Bar Mitzvah, Graduation & Every Other Event You Didn’t Want to Go To in the First Place, it’s a sort of guidebook to help lessen the pain—and up the fun—of special occasion speeches.

She co-authored it with Rick Mitchell, a veteran comedy writer. The two are hoping their experience in the laughter business will help others avoid what befell the father of the bride whose toast debacle Leifer witnessed. Instead of talking about how his accomplished daughter found the love of her life, dad basically delivered a reading of her resume. She went to a Ivy League university. She graduated with a 4.0 grade point average. She was at the top of her medical school class. Etc., etc.

Leifer says the speech became the talk of the line at valet parking when the wedding was over. Someone was overheard saying, “Was this a wedding or a job fair?”

Ouch.

Some of the book’s top tips are ones Toastmasters know well. For instance: Keep it brief. The Los Angeles-based Leifer says no wedding toast should be longer than five minutes. Otherwise, it becomes a crowd killer. As she says in the book, “There’s a reason ‘More is more’ did not become a saying.”

Also important when delivering a toast: Don’t over-indulge beforehand. Toasters might have one drink to settle their nerves, Leifer told me, “but then they feel so comfortable that they have another one, or seven.... It can really ruin an event.”

Leifer is an influential figure in the comedy world. She started doing stand-up nearly 50 years ago, at a time when few women were performing in that medium. I remember watching her perform stand-up bits on the Late Night With David Letterman show.

She also built a successful writing career, working on such iconic television comedy shows as Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm.

While humor can liven up and lift a toast, Leifer and Mitchell also warn about using it intelligently. It’s unwise to employ profanity or raunchy jokes at family celebrations, they note, where children and grandparents are usually on hand. If you’re not sure what humor might offend, run it by someone beforehand.

Profanity, says Leifer, can be a crutch, something she learned early in her stand-up career when comedy star Jay Leno brought it to her attention.

“He came into the Improv [a comedy club in Los Angeles] to see me as a young comic,” Leifer recalls. “And after my set, he talked to me at the bar and said, ‘I think you have a lot of talent, I think you can go a long way, but you’re cursing a lot in your act. And I think with cursing, you win the battle but lose the war.’”

Today, nearly 50 years after she first began hitting the stand-up stages, Leifer still loves the craft of writing jokes and performing comedy in the clubs, adding that “there’s nothing like a new line working and feeling fresh.”

In terms of toasting, Leifer notes that delivering a concise, funny, from-the-heart toast is a gift to those asking you to speak. I hope some day I’ll be giving this gift—in the form of a wedding toast to my now-18-year-old daughter. In the weeks leading up to the big event, I’ll be in the Toastmasters club, working on my material, fine-tuning my lines, and pleading for lots of feedback.

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