Wedding Planning includes wedding speeches that have real flavor and that use those words that bring You Images. As you write, notice the way words sound on paper.

Now you might at first think this seems trivial. But, let me tell you, careless words with images can sour an otherwise perfect wedding speech. Then again, a flawed speech almost jumps when the right mental image you intend, is invoked.

Words that carry images as if (let me coin a new word) by an email or "room-mail" attachment! Explain?

During an interview, Pam White, a professional wedding planner in W.V., told me of the image-making faculty. This faculty is at its very best in the wedding speech. She spoke of one Mother of the Bride speech. Her magical ability was to call to mind vivid and varied pictures, appropriate to the wedding day. It made her short speech memorable.

Now, this is a powerful element in good wedding speaking. Use words that invoke images. What the speaker sees in her imagination is likely to be shared by her listeners.

Described also by Dr. Conwell, who put it like this: "Oh! The power of words! With them we sway mens' minds at will. Let me call your attention to the sea. The Sea! Close your eyes and look at it as you saw it last summer."

"Think of its waves away, away out yonder. See that ripple of white running along on the crest of the nearer one? See it now, its sheen, as it advances in a wreath of delicate foam almost to your feet, and then rolls playfully back. It's a beautiful sheet that will be lost in the next incoming tide."

"Oh wait, See the old mast out there? ...the one with the sails that dots the horizon? You see them all now, don't you? Why?"

"Words - only words!"

This author - wedding planner asks you the reader to test what you really saw in reading the foregoing. Answer questions like the following:

Did you see the sea?
What color was it?
How high were the waves?
Was there any breeze?
Was it day or night?
Did you see any boats?
How many?
Were they sailboats or otherwise?
How far away were they?
Where were you?

Your wedding speech will positively shine when you integrate a visual image within it. Or, gasp! Do you dare for two?

Home!

Now you, the listener, just think of your old homestead. Let me go through it with you as you roam about the dear old familiar scenes. Tell me where your mother sat and where your father used to read the paper. Show me the place where your sister played and where you studied in those dear old days. You see it all again! Don't you?

Why? I have uttered only a word "home". A handful followed - only a string of words! But, did you see the old home?

Was it indoors?
Describe it.
Did you see your mother?
Describe her.
Describe your father and sister.
What more did you see?

The image-making faculty can be surprisingly developed by such aids as endeavoring to see the pictures of what one speaks. To describe it orally to another or to write then speak about it in one's own words on the wedding day then becomes a pleasure. To see it in your words.

The aim should be to secure vivid impressions. For practice write from memory
...a description of a storm,
...a landscape,
...a battle,
...the sky at night,
...a fires light.