Exercise your voice to avoid damage to your vocal chords.
Are you involved in the arts? Perhaps you are a vocalist, an actor or even a public speaker. Have you ever had your voice prevent you from performing your task effectively? You know, you probably could have avoided that. Did you know that you can have permanent damage to your vocal chords if you don’t warm them up properly? Avoid permanent vocal chord damage. Warm up your voice – properly!

The following exercises are for the experienced actor, speaker or vocalist and should not be attempted by the average “Joe” or “Jane” for that matter. I’m kidding!! Anyone can try them… they’re just mixtures of words and or sounds for goodness sake.

Say the warm ups however you like. Find your own rhythm and speed. I recommend starting slow and then increase your speed gradually. Admittedly, some of the warm ups may seem kind of odd. Some may even look stupid to you at first. Don’t worry about that. Do them anyway. They have been designed to have both simple and quite complex patterns and are easy to remember.

Ready? Give it a shot. Don’t forget to breathe

Vocal Warm ups – Set 1
1. Ah-blah, alligator; blah-blah, anticipator

2. Beckoned Becky, boasted Bobby, believed babbling Brooke.

3. Can’t David Eat Fish, Gail?

4. Honduras has horrible hamburgers.

5. In Jeffrey Kemp’s last meeting, no one presentation remained solid.

6. Trust the tongue twisters to tickle that tongue.

7. Ugly vampires wear extraordinarily yellow zippers.

8. Alligators – Baboons – Cats – Dogs – Elephants – Fish

9. Gorillas – Horses – Iguanas – Jaguars – Kangaroos

10. Llamas – Monkeys – Newts – Octopus – Porcupines

11. Quail – Rabbits – Snakes – Turtles – Unicorns – Yaks – Zebra

Set 2
This set of free warm ups are to be used for practicing pure vowel sounds. They are to be said rhythmically with breaths after each line. Good luck and have fun!

A (pronounced ah)
ah – zah – ah – zah – ah – zah – ah
bah – yah – bah – yah – bah – yah – bah
cah – xah – dah – xah – cah – xah – cah
dah – wah – dah – dah – gah – dah – gah

E (pronounced eh)
feh – veh – feh – veh – feh – veh – feh
geh – teh – geh – teh – geh – teh – geh
heh – seh – heh – seh – heh – seh – heh
jeh – reh – jeh – reh – jeh – reh – jeh

I (pronounced ee)
kee – nee – kee – nee – kee – nee – kee
lee – mee – lee – mee – lee – mee – lee
mee – lee – mee – lee – mee – lee – mee
nee – kee – nee – kee – nee – kee – nee

O (pronounced oh)
poh – joh – poh – joh – poh – joh – poh
roh – hoh – roh – hoh – roh – hoh – roh
soh – goh – soh – goh – soh – goh – soh
toh – foh – toh – foh – toh – foh – toh

U (pronounced oo)
voo – doo – voo – doo – voo – doo – voo
woo – coo – woo – coo – woo – coo – woo
yoo – boo – yoo – boo – yoo – boo – yoo
zoo – oo – zoo – oo – zoo – oo – zoo

The “Extras” to these warm ups.
By doing all of them, you will speed through the alphabet, twice. Go through them all just 5 times and you’ll actually go through the alphabet 10 times. Truly a great workout and warmup for the vocalist/actor/speaker! I’m not going to say that this is a full vocal warm-up. You should spend 15 minutes or more on warming them up. However, this is a great vocal warm-up tool. Feel free to remember them! Anyway, much success on your Voice and/or Public Speaking Adventures. Don’t forget to print this out or bookmark it so that you can practice these and commit them to memory.

Other Quick Vocal Tips
Don’t forget to breathe properly. Use good diction, even if you’re reciting a part that doesn’t require it. Differentiate between your “D” and your “T.” (very, very common mistake.) Make each statement, every single word, stand out.

As vocal expert Kristin Linklater has written, a voice needs to be both attractive and have immediate sensual impact: actors must “generate within themselves an electric presence,” and give us a sound, which is “played on by thought impulse.” In Being Julia (2004), Annette Bening commands an audience with the surge of her voice as much as her movements. Playing an acclaimed actress, she’s absolutely precise: any time she gets hold of a t or d, she turns it into a tiny little dart, like clipping a press-stud into place. Yet this highly tuned performance is not excessive; Bening uses her vocals to convey the detachment of her character. During most of her conversations, Julia maintains an uncanny distance from her voice: even when it seems convincingly careless, her face remains watchful and unchanged. No wonder the other characters scan her every word for signs of ‘acting.’

The last decade has arguably been one of the richest times for voices in movies. Think of Linda Fiorentino, whose flat, condensed voice deadens every word on impact in The Last Seduction (1994), making phrases like “do-able” and “designated fuck” sound like serious propositions. There’s Diane Keaton, whose voice has always been a fascinating combination of slickness and soft sounds: listen to the way she concentrates and narrows each phrase, squeezing out words like “true” and “enthused” in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). It’s a sticky, tactile voice–she clearly relishes the click of every consonant–and while it’s distinctive because of its close, nasal tones, Keaton manages to hit surprising notes in almost every scene.

A sharp vocal stylist can take a sentence and savor it purely in terms of its blend of sounds and the opportunities for richness. Watch Rebecca de Mornay, making a meal out of her one good line in The Three Musketeers (1993): “One flick of my wrist and I could change your religion.” Seeing De Mornay say the words “flick,” “flesh,” and “close” was one of the real pleasures of watching movies in the Eighties and Nineties. There’s an innate toniness to her voice, which comes from the lowness and precise clipping. When she describes a younger man as “handsome,” you can feel the subtleness of her appreciation: the word sounds exquisitely hand-tooled. It’s almost as if she takes the style of David Mamet to the extreme: each word is expensively delineated from the last, and she thrusts out her lines towards an audience, giving it time to examine all the details of her intonation. But it’s the little inhalation at the end of every sentence that pulls you in: that quick suction as she draws breath on each phrase like a cigarette. The tight, focused quality of her voice melds into the soundtrack of a film, giving us a close sense of her physical presence.

More than a decade is a long period; it makes up almost three presidential terms and three Olympic games. But for me time has elapsed too fast… they say this always happens when you are happy. I am happy to be still violently in love with my wife and I appreciate all her care and tolerance throughout the years. Of course, I should admit that marrying for love was a reckless thing to do – but as Josh Billings put it, such marriage “is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it”(1). Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I were lucky to be presented with some Lord’s graces during this decade – the chief of them is our son, Jim.

In these years we’ve done a lot together. We have built a house and planted a garden; we have climbed the Everest Mountain and tried parachute jumping. But most importantly, we learned to tolerate with each other’s habits and traits, to say “sorry” when you are wrong and “I love you” on all other occasions. We learned to cherish every evening spent with the family – even if it means doing nothing special, just sitting on the sofa and trying to read a newspaper, while Jim is rushing about the room imitating the sound of the helicopter’s engines. We learned being happy with what we have – and we have a family, a son and you, our good old friends.

Of course, there were some ups and downs – but I must confess that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. Like a good wine, a good relationship becomes better and better with every passing year. It worked for our marriage and still makes my wife and me happy.

Today I am offering to raise our glasses for love, the cornerstone of any household, and hope to see you at our silver wedding party. Bottoms up!

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“Uptalk” is sweeping the English-speaking world, it would seem. Reports of it in Australia, New Zealand, England, and Canada are pouring in. Unfortunately, because it is different from radio-TV intonation, it frightens many people.

Linguists didn’t like the journalese term “uptalk”, so they created their own monstrosity (which is, admittedly a bit more descriptive): High Rising Tone or simply HRT. It is an intonation pattern in which the pitch of the voice rises to the level of a question across the predicate of a statement, e.g. “I heard Freddy is working real hard these days? at two jobs now? one at night and the other during the day?”

The intonation is not that of a question, however, because it does not simply rise at the end of the sentence but before the end and is sustained. It sounds very much like the intonation of “you know what I’m sayin?” superimposed on a statement.

Imagine the intonation of that phrase added to that of “I heard Freddy is working real hard these days, know what I’m saying?” Now, drop the phrase and retract the intonation over the phrase itself. The interesting aspect of this analysis is that the meaning of this information is very similar to the meaning of the phrase. It is not question intonation nor does it mark questions; it serves to accentuate whatever is being said and checks to see if the listener is following.

Raising the intonation before the end of a statement is not unusual. Another language I speak, Russian, regularly indicates dependent clauses by the same raised intonation pattern that they use for questions. So it is not an unusual linguistic phenomenon; it is just unusual for those of us accustomed to radio-TV intonation.

A major question has been, where did uptalk originate? According to a 1995 piece in the Houston Chronicle, “It began as a feature of valley speak, the adolescent argot native to the San Fernando Valley and immortalised by the valley girl. But now uptalk has taken on a life of its own.” Others have traced it to Australia and New Zealand. Neither of these presumptions are true.

In fact, it was alive and healthy in the South in the 1950s because most of my cousins used it in rural North Carolina and many girls in the city high school did, too. It was only used when they were talking relatively urgently about something and, as many others have noted, only by girls.

My guess would be that it is a late development of an Irish accentuation pattern which also tends to go up at unusual points in a phrase. Irish and Scottish accents changed more slowly in the South than in the North since, as I mentioned recently on a talk show, the southern accents were not battered by the foreign accents of immigrants, who arrived mostly in the North. However, this is just a working hypothesis for which I have no historical evidence.

However, next week I will be back in the South and will certainly keep my ears open for further evidence of uptalk down there. I think that all evidence points to uptalk being a second major contribution to English made by the South, yall being the first.  

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Dear guests, thank you for coming to us today to celebrate the 11th anniversary of our marriage. Eleven years ago I asked this woman to marry me and was childishly thrilled to call her my wife for the first time in my life. I can still recall the slightest particulars of that day, up to my astonishment when I saw Helen in the awesome wedding gown going down the aisle.

More than a decade is a long period; it makes up almost three presidential terms and three Olympic games. But for me time has elapsed too fast… they say this always happens when you are happy. I am happy to be still violently in love with my wife and I appreciate all her care and tolerance throughout the years. Of course, I should admit that marrying for love was a reckless thing to do – but as Josh Billings put it, such marriage “is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it”(1). Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I were lucky to be presented with some Lord’s graces during this decade – the chief of them is our son, Jim.

In these years we’ve done a lot together. We have built a house and planted a garden; we have climbed the Everest Mountain and tried parachute jumping. But most importantly, we learned to tolerate with each other’s habits and traits, to say “sorry” when you are wrong and “I love you” on all other occasions. We learned to cherish every evening spent with the family – even if it means doing nothing special, just sitting on the sofa and trying to read a newspaper, while Jim is rushing about the room imitating the sound of the helicopter’s engines. We learned being happy with what we have – and we have a family, a son and you, our good old friends.

Of course, there were some ups and downs – but I must confess that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. Like a good wine, a good relationship becomes better and better with every passing year. It worked for our marriage and still makes my wife and me happy.

Today I am offering to raise our glasses for love, the cornerstone of any household, and hope to see you at our silver wedding party. Bottoms up Dear guests, thank you for coming to us today to celebrate the 11th anniversary of our marriage. Eleven years ago I asked this woman to marry me and was childishly thrilled to call her my wife for the first time in my life. I can still recall the slightest particulars of that day, up to my astonishment when I saw Helen in the awesome wedding gown going down the aisle.

More than a decade is a long period; it makes up almost three presidential terms and three Olympic games. But for me time has elapsed too fast… they say this always happens when you are happy. I am happy to be still violently in love with my wife and I appreciate all her care and tolerance throughout the years. Of course, I should admit that marrying for love was a reckless thing to do – but as Josh Billings put it, such marriage “is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it”(1). Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I were lucky to be presented with some Lord’s graces during this decade – the chief of them is our son, Jim.

In these years we’ve done a lot together. We have built a house and planted a garden; we have climbed the Everest Mountain and tried parachute jumping. But most importantly, we learned to tolerate with each other’s habits and traits, to say “sorry” when you are wrong and “I love you” on all other occasions. We learned to cherish every evening spent with the family – even if it means doing nothing special, just sitting on the sofa and trying to read a newspaper, while Jim is rushing about the room imitating the sound of the helicopter’s engines. We learned being happy with what we have – and we have a family, a son and you, our good old friends.

Of course, there were some ups and downs – but I must confess that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. Like a good wine, a good relationship becomes better and better with every passing year. It worked for our marriage and still makes my wife and me happy.

Today I am offering to raise our glasses for love, the cornerstone of any household, and hope to see you at our silver wedding party. Bottoms up

Dear guests, thank you for coming to us today to celebrate the 11th anniversary of our marriage. Eleven years ago I asked this woman to marry me and was childishly thrilled to call her my wife for the first time in my life. I can still recall the slightest particulars of that day, up to my astonishment when I saw Helen in the awesome wedding gown going down the aisle.

More than a decade is a long period; it makes up almost three presidential terms and three Olympic games. But for me time has elapsed too fast… they say this always happens when you are happy. I am happy to be still violently in love with my wife and I appreciate all her care and tolerance throughout the years. Of course, I should admit that marrying for love was a reckless thing to do – but as Josh Billings put it, such marriage “is so honest that God can’t help but smile on it”(1). Ladies and gentlemen, my wife and I were lucky to be presented with some Lord’s graces during this decade – the chief of them is our son, Jim.

In these years we’ve done a lot together. We have built a house and planted a garden; we have climbed the Everest Mountain and tried parachute jumping. But most importantly, we learned to tolerate with each other’s habits and traits, to say “sorry” when you are wrong and “I love you” on all other occasions. We learned to cherish every evening spent with the family – even if it means doing nothing special, just sitting on the sofa and trying to read a newspaper, while Jim is rushing about the room imitating the sound of the helicopter’s engines. We learned being happy with what we have – and we have a family, a son and you, our good old friends.

Of course, there were some ups and downs – but I must confess that the former greatly outnumbered the latter. Like a good wine, a good relationship becomes better and better with every passing year. It worked for our marriage and still makes my wife and me happy.

Today I am offering to raise our glasses for love, the cornerstone of any household, and hope to see you at our silver wedding party. Bottoms up

First of all let me welcome all the guests and say thank you to all of you for being with us today and making the atmosphere of the wedding party so warm and cozy. We are happy to share this holiday with family members and relatives from both sides. Especially welcome are those who traveled a long way to come here.

To confess, throughout the day I have been looking at my daughter in the wedding gown, so beautiful, solemn and brimming with happiness – like a tender white lilac on a spring morning – and I still couldn’t believe my eyes. It seems to me that just an instant ago my future wife and I were standing at this altar and sealing our marriage with a kiss and now the finest outcome of our marriage, our daughter, that cute blue-eyed tot, has grown up and said two simple words “I do” to create her own family.

During today’s wedding ceremony I recalled a thousand little details about her. Some of you know Donna as a talented web-designer; for others she is a devoted tennis player; many of us know her as a faithful friend. For me, ladies and gentlemen, she was and is and will be a little girl with funny plaits and surprised blue eyes, as big as a plate. I remember the day when she was born: a bright April morning with red tulips blossoming at the flower-beds by the maternity hospital; it was one of the happiest days of my newly-baked father’s life. I remember her first school days, when she filled her exercise-books with fancy hieroglyphs instead of letters. Well, when her plaits and surprised glance are gone, at least one thing hasn’t changed: her handwriting, which I still can’t decode.

I recall her drowsing on my lap, while I read her the fairy-tales about charmed princesses. Today she looks like a fairy princess, and I believe she has at last found her prince and they will live happily ever after for true marriage means that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody – and you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible (1).

I am very happy for Donna and Roderick, and I am sure they are a perfect match, for they fit each other as two pieces of a puzzle that God must have scattered on the Earth in the ancient times.

Dear Donna and dear Roderick, I won’t bore you with lengthy pieces of paternal advice regarding marriage and life together – this world is entirely yours, and it is only you two who will determine its rules. I am sure that you will build a reliable family hearth, a cozy nook where you will feel at your ease and which will give you strength to withstand the storms and challenges of life. On this way, let me only wish you tolerance and love. As one wise man once said, “a successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person” (1).

Finally, I will share with you a quotation that guided me through my marriage – not a single day of these 31 years I regret. It is taken from the Bible and says that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (2).

Let me propose a toast to the bride and the groom, and let us stand up and clink glasses for love in the family of Donna and Roderick.

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Surfing the Internet is one of the favorite leisure activities in many Middle East countries where a young generation of digitally competent users has been established. Young people have a good chance of participating in online discussion forums, which encourages fruitful exchange of ideas Young Internet users learn how to democratize their ideas, responding to diverse opinions with respect and tolerance. Young Internet users in the Middle East become innovative and technologically advanced. The Internet satisfies their need for openness. Like young people all over the world, they enjoy personalizing.

The statistical data related to Internet services in the Middle East reveals the fact that, on the one hand, the Internet is rapidly developing in the region and, on the other hand, this development is not equal Internet users in the Middle East comprise about three percent of world users. It means that 46 million people in the Middle East are Internet users. On the average, the percentage of Internet users in the Middle East is approximately the same as globally. However, if we take into account separate countries, the difference is amazing. The highest Internet penetration is in the United Arab Emirates where half of the population has Internet access. The lowest Internet penetration is in Iraq where only one percent of population has Internet access. Internet penetration is high in Lebanon (39.5 percent), Iran (34.9 percent), Kuwait (34.7 percent), and Bahrain (34.8 percent), whereas it is extremely low in Iraq and Yemen (www.internetworldstats.com). Therefore, young populations in the region have no equal access to Internet services. In some Middle East countries young people are advantageous to be active Internet users, while in others they have certain limits.

In the Middle East, Internet is becoming a pervasive social force, since digital literacy means Internet access and less censored world outlook for younger generations in the Middle East. The Internet integrates the Middle East populations into the global world. Internet resistance is a step backwards to closed societies, whereas Internet access makes traditionally closed societies much more open ones. Digitally competent Middle Easters can judge themselves how their life is different from the rest of the world and what universal values are shared. Internet access provides Middle Easters with the freedom of choice that is a step forward towards democratization of Middle East societies.

Person 2: I would like to thank our CEO Mr. Jonathan Brown for his support during these two hard years. I hope that our team has lived up to your expectations.

Person 1: We have shown that we can manage our team business for the long term. It is a great pleasure to know that all our efforts were not in vain. We have hopes of a new marketer’s agreement that will position us well in future.

Person 2: Our team performance in 2007-2008 is evidence of sustained profitable growth.

Person 1: I agree that we have worked as reliable team members, full of ideas that we wanted to realize by combined efforts.

Person 2: While working on the project, many of us enhanced our leadership skills. We all remember how important was Jack Stevens’ decision to introduce improvements in the equipment that increased our revenues. Thank you, Jack, for your bravery and talents. Your contribution was invaluable. Mary Stone began work in our team just before we had started the project. We even argued a lot whether she would be able to become an asset to our team or not. We confided in her. Today, she has proved to be one of the most devoted team members. Mary wants to continue her studies at university. We are all supporting her and wish her all the best. Mike Stuart, Rod White, Brian Gascoigne – I thank you all for long hours spent together, for devotion to our team work, for your generosity in sharing your skills with younger members of the team. It was a great pleasure to work with you. I am pleased to announce that Brian has been promoted to the post of senior engineer: so much his participation in the project was appraised by the board of directors.

Person 1: I thank all our team members for your business and express sincere appreciation for the pleasant association I enjoy with you.

Person 2: Our team has actively participated in the company’s innovative projects. Innovative product planning and the attainment of manufacturing excellence are a corporate commitment of the highest priority. You may be assured of our continuing dedication with the purpose of achieving the best quality and performance. I am sure that now we have a much better understanding of the secrets of team work.

Person 1: The success of the project would not have been possible without valued support of the whole company. We felt your confidence in us, and we had been working hard to realize your hopes. We felt how important this professional growth was to us, how much it would mean to each of us personally.

Person 2: I have mixed feelings, to tell the truth. On the one hand, the project is over and, the task fulfilled, our team may also become a history. On the other hand, we’re planning a new project, we are ardently discussing it, and we want to go on working together.

Person 1: We’ve become friends. I like this hearty atmosphere that warmed me a lot. I have no relatives in this city but I never felt lonely because my colleagues invited me to their homes, we kept many holidays together, and in summer we even went on holiday together, as one team. I appreciate this rare opportunity so much.

Person 2: I hope that we will be able to climb up career ladder together, preserving this wonderful spirit of competitive cooperation, when, like Dumas’ musketeers, we all for one.

Person 1: I thank you again for your efforts in achieving our organization’s goals.

Person 2: I wish all of us new achievements in fulfilling our noble tasks.

Both: Thank you for attention

We are a small branch of a huge pharmaceutical company.

We are only five years old.

Most of us pioneered new attitudes to healthcare in this country.

The secret of our branch’s success is our focus on people and values. We depend on employer-sponsored insurance and state-run Medicaid programs for much of our revenues.

Due to the new state-run programs launched in 2008, we were able to lower the price of drugs and deliver high quality products.

Our market share has increased, although we are still less competitive than J & J.

Our goal is to sell locally produced drugs to provide our consumers with cheaper analogues of costly foreign drugs. The support of our government, despite the financial crisis, helps us achieve this goal in the nearest future.

I am happy to say that we are well positioned for the future.

We are planning to open a new drugstore in the north of the country.

We are planning to promote a new drug that will help those who suffer from high blood pressure.

We are launching a new anti-pain program.

We are extending our presence in the south of the country.

I am sure we will continue seizing all competitive advantages of our focus on domestically produced drugs. These drugs are much cheaper and not less effective than the ones advertised by our chief competitor, J & J. As the standards of life are not expected to be high in 2009, the development of our home pharmaceutical industry is one of the urgent problems.

We are ready to cooperate with our government and we hope to arrive at mutual understanding.

I love being here tonight, with your families sharing our success.

I want to thank all of you, dear guests, for your support.

It is so meaningful to us because in business we depend on many factors.

I know, dear guests, how lonely you feel sometimes when we are at work and you are patiently waiting us for dinner.

We are often on business trips establishing our network throughout the country.

But all this is not a big sacrifice, due to your understanding, because we have results, because we are successful, because you are always by our side.

Peter’s wife Liana is of great help to us. Marina’s husband Andrei has become a member of our team. His ideas and advice are valuable. Rita’s sister Nadya is engaged to our driver Sasha.

We are a family, and this feeling is great.

What can we expect from the coming year?

I wish we had stability. I wish we made steady progress.

I wish we continued providing our consumers with high quality medical care at low costs.

I wish all of us were healthy and wealthy.

It’s time to rest and to have fun.

May you have a bright and prosperous 2009 New Year filled with all good blessings!

Happy New Year!

To confess, throughout the day I have been looking at my daughter in the wedding gown, so beautiful, solemn and brimming with happiness – like a tender white lilac on a spring morning – and I still couldn’t believe my eyes. It seems to me that just an instant ago my future wife and I were standing at this altar and sealing our marriage with a kiss and now the finest outcome of our marriage, our daughter, that cute blue-eyed tot, has grown up and said two simple words “I do” to create her own family.

During today’s wedding ceremony I recalled a thousand little details about her. Some of you know Donna as a talented web-designer; for others she is a devoted tennis player; many of us know her as a faithful friend. For me, ladies and gentlemen, she was and is and will be a little girl with funny plaits and surprised blue eyes, as big as a plate. I remember the day when she was born: a bright April morning with red tulips blossoming at the flower-beds by the maternity hospital; it was one of the happiest days of my newly-baked father’s life. I remember her first school days, when she filled her exercise-books with fancy hieroglyphs instead of letters. Well, when her plaits and surprised glance are gone, at least one thing hasn’t changed: her handwriting, which I still can’t decode.

I recall her drowsing on my lap, while I read her the fairy-tales about charmed princesses. Today she looks like a fairy princess, and I believe she has at last found her prince and they will live happily ever after for true marriage means that you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody – and you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible (1).

I am very happy for Donna and Roderick, and I am sure they are a perfect match, for they fit each other as two pieces of a puzzle that God must have scattered on the Earth in the ancient times.

Dear Donna and dear Roderick, I won’t bore you with lengthy pieces of paternal advice regarding marriage and life together – this world is entirely yours, and it is only you two who will determine its rules. I am sure that you will build a reliable family hearth, a cozy nook where you will feel at your ease and which will give you strength to withstand the storms and challenges of life. On this way, let me only wish you tolerance and love. As one wise man once said, “a successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person” (1).

Finally, I will share with you a quotation that guided me through my marriage – not a single day of these 31 years I regret. It is taken from the Bible and says that “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails” (2).

Let me propose a toast to the bride and the groom, and let us stand up and clink glasses for love in the family of Donna and Roderick