Reading somebody else’s finished speech rarely helps as much as you hope. It is polished, it is complete, and it is about a woman you have never met.
So the four extracts below come with their workings shown. Each is followed by what it is doing and why — because the structure is the part that travels, even when none of the details do.
Every name and scenario here is fictional.
The opening: earning your place quickly
"For anyone I haven’t met, I’m Sophie. Erin and I met on our first day of halls in 2011, when she knocked on my door to ask if I had a corkscrew. I didn’t. She’d already tried four other rooms, and she wasn’t going to let a small thing like universal unpreparedness ruin an evening.
That was fourteen years ago, and it remains the most efficient summary of her character I can offer."
What it is doing. It answers the room’s first question — who are you and why are you talking? — in one sentence, and then immediately proves the friendship rather than describing it.
The corkscrew detail is doing more work than it looks. It is small, specific and slightly absurd, which makes it feel true. "We’ve been best friends for fourteen years" tells the room nothing; a woman going door to door in a corridor of strangers tells them everything.
The shape to borrow: name yourself, give one concrete moment from the beginning of the friendship, then say what it revealed.
The story: choose the one that shows a quality
"When my mum was ill, Erin drove two hundred miles on a Tuesday to sit in a hospital car park with me for three hours, because I said I didn’t want to talk about it and she believed me.
She didn’t try to fix it. She brought terrible coffee and a bag of crisps and asked me absolutely nothing. Then she drove home.
I’ve thought about that afternoon more than almost anything else in our friendship, because it’s the clearest evidence I have of who she is. Erin doesn’t turn up to be seen turning up. She just turns up."
What it is doing. This is the extract people find hardest to write, because there is no joke in it. It works anyway — arguably better than a funny one would — because it is specific, restrained, and it ends on a plain sentence rather than a flourish.
Note what it does not do. It does not say she is kind, loyal or thoughtful. It shows one afternoon and lets the room draw the conclusion, which is far more persuasive than being told.
The shape to borrow: one thing she actually did, described without adjectives, then a single sentence naming what it proves.
Bringing in her partner: what you noticed
"I want to say something about Dan, and I’m going to resist the traditional line about losing a friend, because I haven’t lost anything. If anything I’ve gained somebody who texts me when Erin’s forgotten to eat.
What I noticed first wasn’t romantic at all. It was that Erin started finishing her sentences. She’s spent her whole life talking over herself, jumping three thoughts ahead — and somewhere in the first few months with Dan, she slowed down. Not less herself. Just less in a hurry to be understood.
Dan, thank you for that. It’s the kindest thing I’ve watched anybody do for her."
What it is doing. It refuses the "losing my best friend" cliché explicitly, which gets a small laugh and avoids making the partner sound like a thief.
Then it offers evidence rather than compliment. "She started finishing her sentences" is an observation nobody could make up, and it says more about the relationship than any general praise about how happy they are together.
The shape to borrow: one specific change you have observed in her, attributed to the relationship without claiming he rescued or completed her.
The ending: say it to her, then stop
"Erin, you have been at every important moment of my adult life, usually before I’d worked out it was important.
I hope this marriage gives you everything you’ve given the rest of us — and I hope Dan knows he’s got the person who shows up.
Ladies and gentlemen, please raise your glasses. To Erin and Dan."
What it is doing. It turns from the room to her, uses plain language at the moment most speeches reach for grandeur, and connects back to the earlier story — "the person who shows up" echoes the hospital car park without repeating it.
Then it stops. No final joke, no second thought, no returning to the microphone. The toast is the destination.
The shape to borrow: one sentence directly to her, one linking her to her partner, then the names and the glasses.
What the four have in common
They are short. Each extract is thirty to sixty seconds spoken. Four extracts of this length, with linking sentences and a toast, can form the backbone of a roughly four-to-five-minute speech.
They are specific to the point of being unusable by anyone else. Corkscrews, hospital car parks, finishing sentences. Not one of them could be swapped into another wedding.
They mix registers. Two are warm, one is genuinely serious, one is light. A speech that stays at one emotional pitch throughout is exhausting, whichever pitch it picks.
They never explain the emotion. Nobody says "and that meant so much to me". The restraint is what makes it land.
Using these without copying them
The risk with any set of examples is borrowing the words. Wedding guests hear a great many speeches, and second-hand material has a particular flatness that people notice without being able to name.
A better use: read these once, close the page, and answer four questions.
- What is the first specific moment of your friendship you can remember?
- What is one thing she has actually done that shows who she is?
- What have you noticed about her since her partner arrived?
- What would you want her to know if you could only say one sentence?
Those four answers, in that order, are the skeleton of a speech. The extracts above are simply what it looks like when the same skeleton is filled in by somebody else.
If the words won’t come
If you have the memories but they refuse to arrange themselves, our maid or man of honour speech writer asks you those questions properly and shapes the answers into something written to be spoken — in your voice, not a template.
You see the plan and one fully written moment free, before deciding anything.