Wedding speeches: It’s the season of matrimonial trauma and terrible jokes - Gaby Soutar

Ting, ting, ting. The tapping of a butter knife on a Champagne flute to signal an incoming speech is the traditional alert at a wedding. Sober up everyone and pay attention.

The dad, best man, groom and/or maid of honour do their bit. They look joyous, but it’s usually forced and they have terror behind their eyes.

You’re just happy that it’s not you up there, so you laugh encouragingly at the right moments.

This is probably one of the most barbaric wedding customs, along with first dances and spending a year’s wage in one day. Indeed, your monthly heating allowance has been wasted on someone singing Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl at the reception while uncles flap their arms about.

Wedding speeches can be ghost-written these days - or mimic a stand-up routine. Picture: Volodymyr Ivash

We’re nearly at the beginning of March, which marks the official wedding season.

Maybe you’ve been invited to one. I have not, since I have no eligible pals. I only hear the clanging chimes of doom these days, rather than ding dong – the bells are going to chime.

However, I have had daily press releases to alert me to the crucial time of year, as well as news of a book, The Modern Couple’s Guide to Wedding Speeches, written by BBC TV producer, Heidi Ellert-McDermott (out March 9, Hachette).

This piqued my interest, since the spiel says it outlines modern speech etiquette, encourages more women to take to the mic, suggests that we ditch cheesy jokes and reveals “the secret”, which is that people often use ghostwriters.

In fact, Ellert-McDermott has her own company, Speechy, which employs a whole team.

I already knew of this shortcut, as my husband once had a brief freelance job of writing wedding speeches. The process involved a short telephone interview with the victim, then the cobbling together of amusing anecdotes. He avoided anything too risque, so nobody would slap the middle man.

There is a huge market when it comes to this art. However, that doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a giant cheat to hire someone.

My other half has only once had to make a matrimonial speech of his own, when he was best man at his pal’s wedding and spent months beforehand fretting about standing up in front of a room full of people.

After more psyching-up than Rocky going into the ring against Apollo Creed, it turned out to be excellent, especially the material on some of his friend’s teenage misdemeanours. They involved a bit of light pyromania, and the decapitation of a few daffodils with a golf putter. That’s kids for you, when you live in a small village, with very little to do in your spare time apart from assault flowers.

We all laughed, but the bride seemed unamused. The marriage was doomed. At least my husband managed to please most members of the audience, just maybe not the most important one.

At our own wedding, my other half was too nervous to make his own speech.

As an alternative, he held up signs, in the style of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues video. Instead of words extracted from lyrics including “Johnny’s in the basement, mixing up the medicine”, he’d written something romantic and amusing.

I think so, anyway, but it’s all a blur. It was the happiest day of my life and all that jazz. However, as he made the silent speech, the ginormous cakes – one chocolate and raspberry and the other lime and coconut, both procured from Mimi’s Bakehouse – were already waiting on the hall table.

At that point and, as with so many important occasions in my life, I was distracted by the anticipation of a feeding session.

My hand was itching to get hold of the knife and cut myself a mega slice.

No one else ended up saying anything official at our wedding, although I know they vaguely thought about it, then bailed at the crucial moment.

That’s fine, as the whole day was a low-key affair.

I wore a high-street dress and there were no confetti, veils or favours. Nothing borrowed. We didn’t try to replicate that famous move from Dirty Dancing. I had no Pinterest board. I’m the bridezooky to your average bridezilla

We just had a civil service at the City Chambers then trotted up the road, with my mum getting her sling-back heels caught in the cobbles, before having lunch at Cannonball Restaurant & Bar. My sister-in-law took photos of us on the esplanade of Edinburgh Castle, but we were snippily told to move on by staff. Embarrassing, but no biggie, since she’d already pressed the shutter.

Then we headed back to my flat for THOSE EXCELLENT CAKES and yet more booze.

We let guests do what they liked, and that meant nobody bothered to put themselves through the trauma of doing the “ting, ting, ting”. Fair enough, I can see why.

There is pressure, now, to come up with some kind of stand-up routine, as if you're Katherine Ryan.

When my dad made a speech at my half sister’s wedding, back in the Eighties, his effort was very formal. I recently found the typed pages, which had Biro scribbles in the margins. He’d definitely put the effort in, though I wonder what my mum thought when he shared his advice about marriage. According to him, it’s like a bath – not so hot when you get into it.

You could use the same metaphor for wedding speeches.

If you want the whole thing to be as relaxing as possible, pull the plug.