Grrrrr. Long speeches.

Suggest that he do his speeches at the rehearsal dinner instead! In my opinion, wedding "speeches" should be limited to toasts of a minute or less.

Yes, rehearsal dinner speeches. Everyone can get their speech out then and you can easily limit the speeches at the wedding.

Agree with lillybride. let the extra people make speeches at the rehearsal dinner. 5 minutes is a very reasonable limit on the speech. 5 mins is long

OMG! Great idea. I never thought of that. It makes way too much sense.

I was going to say exactly what Lilly said.

I agree with everyone...I'm going to have open toasts at rehearsal dinner and only have MOH, BM, and maybe FOB do toasts at the wedding. Oh...and of course, FH to thank everyone for coming and celebrating with us.

You will not let this happen. Five minutes is four minutes too long. Trust me on this one.

Let them speak at the rehearsal dinner and give them 3 minutes. Three times six is almost 20 minutes. If he must speak at the wedding, a 'long story' should not be an option. No one will think it's great except him.

My dil asked if I had a particular theme for her toast so I told her the old line "Be sincere, be brief, be seated."

I went to a wedding once and four people did a speech for the bride's side and I got bored. I drank more then I needed to in a short amount of time because I was bored. 2 minute speeches are good--5 minutes max. But if you're having several people speak-- 1 minute each. If your FH just wants to hear the speech-- have it at the rehearsal dinner. More intimate and meaningful. Not everyone at your wedding is going to appreciate or understand the speeches.

Yea "short and sweet" is my motto when it comes to speeches. They do get boring when they drag on and on and on. Yes, have those people make speeches at the rehearsal dinner. Those speeches could be longer. Good luck!

Oh wow, total waste of time in my opinion...

Definitely do the rehearsal dinner. Our friends had lots of speeches and toasts at the rehearsal dinner. They did a few before before dinner, others between a course and last one or two before desserts. It was actually really cute and was a fun way to toast the couple during dinner. Everyone kept it under 3 minutes.

Oh yikes! Yea, I think anything over 10 minutes for all speeches is too long. We just had our BM and MOH do speeches. I was really looking forward to them and they did great! And then we did a short speech of course, thanking our friends and family, but that was it.

Speeches at rehearsal dinner = great idea

Long speeches can be like lectures - boring, don't know where it's going, or when it's going to end! Sometimes it's almost like guests compete for the "I Know the Bride and Groom Best" Award, meanwhile you are known as "boring speech guy/gal" to all the other guests. I agree keep it to the rehearsal dinner.

To be honest, that sounds awful...definitely see if there is any way to cut time, people, move to RD, etc. I attended a wedding once where the father-figure of the bride did a 'prayer of blessing' that went on.,.and on...and on...we were trying to figure out later how long it lasted and are guessing 20 minutes. Point being that he may have said he wanted to say a prayer, and they thought 2-3 minutes max. That's pretty much all we remember about that wedding--you don't want your wedding to be remembered as the one with the out-of-control speeches that went on forever!

Have your fiancé listen to you give a five minute speech. He'll change his mind