confused about sentence structure
 

Hey everyone, just joined the forum, it looks great!

I just started learning Japanese and I think I got some of the basics down, but I have a question.

I was taught that verbs always end the sentence. Through my experience, though very limited, I have noticed that saying 'Arigato Gozaimasu' is also at the end of the sentence. I'm not sure that that my latter statement is entirely correct, though. So my question is, if I were trying to say thank you to a small crowd of people for coming, would the following sentence make sense?

Arigato Gozaimasu koko ni kyoo ni ikimashita. (Thank you for coming here today)

Or would I say this in another way?

My wife and I just got married and her work is having a small 'party' and wanted me to give a speech. I want to do it in Japansese but I'm trying to stay close to what I already know and just fill in some of the gaps for this particular occasion. So that it sounds like me talking (them knowing I am just starting to learn) I don't want it to sound like someone wrote the speech for me... otherwise how else will I learn? Thanks in advance,

Jason

no ni after the kyou

kyou, koko ni kitte, arigatou gozaimasu

or if you want to be super polite

kyou, koko ni irasshatte, arigatou gozaimasu

it's always ~~te, (thanks, appology etc). It's a connection sentence structure. See your kuru is at the end of the first part of the structure.

if you want to get into the nitty gritty, gozaimasu is a verb.

But there are exceptions to all grammer rules near enough.