How to write a wedding speech

A wedding speech is short, it is heard once, and most of the room is slightly drunk and entirely on your side. That last part matters: you are not auditioning. You have the friendliest audience you will ever address, and the only real ways to fail are going on too long, making it about you, or telling a story that embarrasses someone.

Five minutes. Roughly 600 to 750 words. If you write more than that, you are writing for yourself.

The structure that works

Say who you are. One sentence. A third of the room has no idea. "I'm Tunde, I've known Ade since we shared a room in our first year, and I've been dreading this since March."

Open with something concrete. Not "marriage is a journey". A specific image, a specific line, a specific moment. The room settles the instant it can picture something.

Tell one story. One. Two if they are short and connected. The commonest fault in wedding speeches is four half-stories that never land, because the speaker could not choose.

Make the story mean something. This is the hinge, and it is the part people skip. The story is not the point; what it reveals is. He drove four hours to help you move a sofa — so the point is that he shows up, and now someone gets that for life.

Turn to the couple. Bring in the partner properly. If you barely know them, say something true and generous rather than something invented — "I've only known Sarah two years, and in that time I've watched my friend become someone who actually answers his phone."

Wish them something specific. Not "health and happiness". Something you actually want for these two people.

Raise the glass. Say the names clearly. Sit down.

Getting the tone right

Warmth first, jokes second. A speech that is only kind is slightly dull. A speech that is only funny is a roast, and there is always someone in the room it lands badly with.

The test for any joke: does it make the couple look good, or does it make you look clever? Cut the second kind. And apply the grandmother rule literally — she is there, she is listening, and a story that is funny among friends at midnight is not the same story at two in the afternoon in front of three generations.

What to leave out

Ex-partners, in any form, including as a joke. Anything involving how much anyone drank. Money. Inside jokes that exclude most of the room. Anything about the wedding planning. "Marriage is about compromise" and every other line the room has heard forty times. Reading the whole thing off your phone without ever looking up.

Delivery

• Read it aloud, timed, standing up. On the page it is always shorter than in the room. BRYME's reading-time calculator gets you close; your own voice gets you closer.
• Print it, large, on one side of card. Phones lock, hands shake, and paper does not.
• Slow down by a third. Everyone rushes. Nobody has ever been told they spoke too slowly at a wedding.
• Look up at the full stops. That is enough eye contact.
• Pause after a laugh. Do not talk through it.
• Have a first line you know by heart. Once the first sentence is out, the rest follows.

Common mistakes

Going over five minutes. Making the speech a list of your own memories. Apologising for being nervous — nobody noticed until you said it. Thanking a long list of people, which is the couple's job, not yours. Reading in a monotone because you have written in a register you would never speak in. Leaving the partner out until the last line.

A short checklist

• Under five minutes, read aloud and timed
• One story, told properly, with a point
• Both partners named and included
• Nothing that embarrasses anyone present
• Printed on card, not on a phone
• A first line you can say without looking