How to write a wedding speech: A pro speechwriter’s top tips
Have a role to play in the nuptials of a friend or family member? Professional speechwriter Alex Dymoke gives his advice on how to write a wedding speech, including managing nerves, getting the right tone and making it as personal as possible.
The other day, at a birthday drinks at a musty little pub in Borough, a friend pulled me to one side. “You got to help me, man,” We have been friends for decades and this man is always getting into scrapes. Alarmed, I braced myself for a request for money, legal help or relationship advice. “I’m giving a speech next week, for a friend’s civil partnership. I’m terrified”.
My friend is articulate and witty, so I said what I always say: wedding audiences are drunk and jolly and will laugh at literally anything. Find a spare two hours, turn on aeroplane mode and write. Stuff will come. “OK” he said and gulped down a mouthful of Guinness.
But my soothing words didn’t do the trick. The next day I got a WhatsApp. “Im struggling here”. So I called him, and delivered a pep talk. Here is a version of what I said.
First, tell a story. When giving a speech about a person it’s tempting to use lots of adjectives like “kind” or “generous” or “funny”. These fall flat because they’re abstract and unspecific and too commonplace to really mean anything to anyone. It’s the classic advice from creative writing courses: show don’t tell. Don’t list a bunch of attributes or traits — tell a story in which these traits come to life.
Second, revel in detail. Most of what you say will be forgotten, but vivid images lodge in the mind. So paint a picture. Especially at the beginning and end. Open with a vignette that expresses a fundamental truth about the person. And adorn it with sensory information. What were people wearing? What could you see, smell or hear? There is humour to be wrung from specificity; observant descriptions can function as jokes. Detail gives life to writing. It’s why I opened this column with “musty little pub in Borough”. It’s why New Yorker pieces open with, “on a Sunday day in [somewhere], [someone] did [something]”?
Third, don’t worry about saying everything. People are complicated and multifaceted. Any speech that covers every aspect of a person would be too long, boring and disjointed to hold an audience’s attention. So choose depth over breadth. Say one thing and say it well. And make sure that thing isn’t obvious. Try to say something original about their character. Reveal something.
Fourth — and really this is the only thing you need to worry about — don’t worry. Don’t fret about giving a hugely polished speech. Don’t get hung up on whether it’s “good” in some objective sense. It’s fine if your voice wavers. And it really doesn’t matter if you’re visibly nervous. In fact, visible nerves often make a speech better. Giving a speech is a generous thing to do and it only seems more so when the speaker is manifestly stepping out of their comfort zone to give it. It’s why the least slick speeches are often the most moving.
There are few sights more stirring than watching a speaker overcome their nerves in real time and gallop triumphantly toward a peroration, applause ringing their ears. It happened at a wedding I went to recently. The father of the groom was nervous. As he took to the mic, the paper fluttered in his trembling hands. His voice wobbled so much at first it was hard to make out what he was saying. But it was well written and sweetly self-deprecating and soon the audience were laughing along. The first chuckles were offered up out of encouragement, but they steadied him, and soon the room was rocking with laughter. The speech told a lovely story about the groom’s life — but that transition, from paralysing fear to commanding performance, is a kind of story in itself, and a thrilling one.
I saw my friend the other day, and asked how it went. “Nightmare,” he said. A mishap with a car meant he arrived with no suit. He had to cobble together an outfit at an hour’s notice. And the speech? “Oh it went great. Standing there in these bizarre clothes… it made it even funnier.”