How to Deliver a Wedding Speech That Doesn’t Suck

I am a little less than a year out from my wedding, and there are already one million things to think about: What’s the color scheme going to be? Does anyone actually want a welcome tote bag? How can I convince TikTok that I’m actually not getting married so that it stops showing me videos about “bridal arms”? Despite all of that, the wedding concern at the forefront of my mind is my favorite part (no, really) of any reception: the speeches.

As the people getting married, you spend more than a year making so many decisions. Every font, flower, and fork is a conversation you’ve been forced to have to ensure the day is as close to your Pinterest board as possible. The speeches, however, present a variable outside of your control. Suddenly, someone else has the mic and can say whatever they want. I’ve seen fathers of the bride bring a threatening aura, maids of honor who thought they could just stand up and wing it, and group speeches from old friends who spent most of their time recounting inside jokes. A bad speech can ruin the momentum of the night, grinding the good vibes to a halt with an off-color joke or a reference to someone’s ex. It’s embarrassing for the couple, it makes all the guests feel weird, and if you’re the one doing the talking, it’s a surefire way to make sure everyone remembers you as the evening’s villain.

Still, I’ve also seen speeches that brought the entire room together, made everyone laugh and then cry, and made us all feel closer to the couple by the end. That’s what I want, of course. But how?

Unfortunately, you can’t just ask someone to pen a beautiful toast that deftly toes the line between humor and sincerity. You can, however, guide them in the right direction. I spoke to a bunch of wedding professionals, all of whom have been to hundreds of weddings, and asked them for tips about how to actually deliver a great wedding speech. They really delivered, and I will be dropping this link into the wedding-party group chat.

Be nice, duh.

As it turns out, there are a lot of ways for a speech to turn negative: parental resentments bubbling up, snide comments, references to exes. Elizabeth Burgi, a wedding photographer in Southern California, has seen it all. “A lot of times, the parents won’t say something nice about their own kid,” she recalls. “I’ve had a mom you could tell was not happy about who her son was marrying, and she made that clear in her speech.”

“Oh, obviously, you shouldn’t be mean in your speech,” you’re saying to yourself. It’s not as obvious as you might think. What you consider to be a lighthearted roast could easily cross a line into actual hurt feelings. Emotions are already running high; don’t push it.

By far, though, the best way to be nice to the couple is to not, under any circumstances, talk about their sex lives. Burgi once worked a wedding where the best man insisted on explaining that he and the groom were “Eskimo brothers,” meaning that they had once slept with the same woman. “The whole time, everyone was wondering if they were talking about the bride, of course.” To make matters worse, the best man was married, so his wife also became a suspect. For the sake of everyone, just cut any and all references to sex. 

Keep it short.

You may have heard the ol’ adage that a wedding speech can never be too earnest or too short. Let’s focus on the latter for a second. According to wedding planner Maureen Tussing, who has overseen over 100 weddings at Deer Mountain Inn in the Hudson Valley, the most important part of any wedding speech is keeping it quick. “If you go on for too long, it just immediately takes away from everything,” she explained to me. “No matter how good your stories are and your jokes are, if you’re talking for more than five minutes, that’s too much.”

The trick to timing it just right is aiming low. New York–based wedding planner DeAnne Stewart always tells people to aim for two and a half minutes, “because they’re going to do five and that’s great.” How many words is five minutes, you ask? A typed-out, double-spaced page in 12-point font is probably around 90 seconds when you account for pausing and (hopefully) laughter, but I am not a clock. Read what you have out loud and edit as needed.

You do actually have to practice.

“I know it’s silly to practice in your room, but do not go up there and wing it,” Cassie Horrell, a Pittsburgh wedding planner, cautioned. “If you’re questioning anything about your speech, you can ask fellow wedding-party members or even the parents of the couple.” Personally, I plan on just telling people that they need to rehearse their speech, but maybe that sort of bluntness doesn’t come naturally to you. This is a great time for delegation — task another member of your wedding party with making sure someone’s speech is in good shape before the ceremony.

Also, ask the DJ for tips if you’re not used to holding a microphone. “There’s nothing worse than people not being able to hear you,” Tussing said. “A lot of people will hold it like an ice cream cone, but you want to point it at your face.”

Print it out.

Sorry to sound like a boomer, but you have to get off the damn phone. Obviously, the Notes app is where most of us are jotting down our thoughts on a day-to-day basis, and there’s nothing wrong with drafting a speech in there. But when it comes to the actual moment, paper is always going to look best. “It’s such a sentimental special moment for some of those people, and then the picture that you get back literally looks like they’re texting,” Horrell told me. If you don’t have access to a printer or your handwriting is illegible, Horrell assured me that someone working at the wedding can print it out for you. Plus, a piece of paper won’t die five minutes before you’re supposed to get up there.

Not everyone has to give a speech.

Stewart, the New York–based wedding planner, had a career as a Broadway performer before pivoting to weddings. She sees each wedding as its own production, and … well, not everyone is up for a big role. “Maybe your most important thing is their feelings because they’re your sibling or they’re your oldest friend or whatever. That’s your prerogative. But you can also have them read a poem.”

If you’re asked to give a speech and the idea of public speaking gives you hives, don’t fret. You can obviously politely decline by saying something like, “I love you, but maybe I could have a different role.” If they continue to pressure you, you can always return to one of the earlier tips. “The shorter, the better. It can be very short and sweet and still land and make sense to the couple,” Horrell said. Feel free to cut it even shorter if need be! “If you have more to say to them, you might give them your written speech and be like, ‘I couldn’t get through this, but this is what I wanted to say,’” Horrell suggested. “And a lot of couples understand that.”

The bride can chill out a little bit.

Perhaps obviously, I am feeling a little micromanage-y about this one very small aspect of my wedding. In talking to these women, I realized that I was perhaps being a little psycho about wedding speeches. I trust my family and friends to not call me the wrong name or spend ten minutes referencing inside jokes, which, it turns out, goes a long way in this arena. The best thing I can actually do is calm down. “Everyone kind of just enjoys it anyways,” Brittney Bartling, a Hudson Valley wedding planner, reassured me. “No one’s perfect, and that’s what is hard with weddings in general. There is a lot of perfectionism towards it, but they’re not perfect. They’re a lot of fun, and people just want to celebrate the couple.”

To my fellow type A brides: Take a deep breath, have a glass of Champagne, and if someone hits minute 12 of their speech, you are legally allowed to cut their mic.