The room already knows the stories.
Which is the entire difficulty. Forty of the people listening were there for at least one of the things you are about to describe, and they will notice if the version you give has been improved.
The stag do it invents for you did not happen.
Ask any general-purpose writing tool for a best man speech and it will give you one immediately. It will be fluent, it will be about the right length, and it will contain a story about the stag do, a joke about the groom's cooking, and a line about how everyone knew from the first time they saw them together. None of that happened. It is the average of every wedding speech ever published, which is precisely why it sounds like one.
That failure is not a small one. A listing that overstates costs you a buyer. A speech that invents a detail costs you in the room, live, in front of the person it is about — because the groom's mother knows he never worked at that pub, and the bride knows they did not meet at a bus stop. The one audience in the world that can fact-check you instantly is the one you are standing in front of.
So this one works the other way round. It will not supply the material and it will not fill a gap with something plausible. Everything in the speech traces back to something you typed, and where it needs a detail you did not give — a year, a place, the name of the friend in the story — it stops and asks you for it in the draft. What you are buying is not invention. It is order, cutting, and a shape you can say out loud.
What it does with what you give it.
Six or seven answers go in: your role on the day, who the couple are to you, how you know them, two or three real moments, the tone you want, how long it should run, and anything that must not be mentioned. A speech, a shorter version of the same speech, cue cards and delivery notes come back.
Here is the part that matters — what happens to a memory that is nearly a story.
We met at uni and he was the only person who came to help when my car broke down on the way to my sister's wedding, drove two hours, didn't say a word about it after.
I have known [ADD FACT: groom's name] since [ADD FACT: which university, and what year you both started]. And the thing I want to tell you about him is not from university at all.
Three years ago my car died on the way to my sister's wedding. I rang him. He drove two hours to get me there — [ADD FACT: where he drove from, and what he had to leave to do it] — and then never mentioned it again. Not once. Not at the time, not since, not even when it would have been useful to him.
That is the whole man, in one story. He turns up, and he doesn't tell you he turned up.
Notice what did not happen. It did not invent the university, or the year, or where he set off from, and it did not quietly drop the story because a detail was missing. It kept the shape and marked the holes, because you can fill those in thirty seconds and nobody else can. It also did not add a joke about your driving. You did not give it one.
The three-year figure is the one thing there worth checking before you read it out. That is what the checks list at the end of the draft is for: anything the speech asserts on your behalf that only you can confirm.
How it works.
- You answer the questions. The long one is the memories box, and it is the only one that really matters. Two or three moments with the who, the where and the why, written badly, beats a page of "he's a great guy" written well. There is a minimum length on that box for exactly this reason.
- Top up once, then spend pence from your balance. A speech is about 28p — never more than 40p and spends only what the finished draft actually costs, so the rest stays in your balance for another job. You can tell it the tone is off, or that a story has to go, and it rewrites; a change is another go at the speech, so it costs pence too.
- You get five things back. The speech, a version cut to roughly half the length in case the day runs late, cue cards in running order, notes on where to pause and where to look up, and a list of what to confirm before the day.
A job that fails to generate spends nothing at all.
Who this suits.
Worth it if
- You have the stories and cannot get them into an order that goes anywhere.
- You write fine in an email and freeze the moment it has to be said aloud to two hundred people.
- You are the father of the bride, the maid of honour, or a second best man, and every example you have found online is a best man doing jokes.
- You know exactly which subject must not come up and want it handled without a drama.
- You have a draft that runs eleven minutes and needs to run five.
Not worth it if
- You genuinely do not know the couple well. Nothing here can manufacture closeness, and a warm speech from a near-stranger is the one thing a room can always hear.
- You want the jokes written for you. It will not write material about exes, weight, money or anyone's past relationships, and it will not punch down for a laugh.
- You are looking for a speech to read cold off a phone. It is written to be said, but it still needs you to have read it twice.
- You want it to sound like a professional speechwriter. It is trying to sound like you, which is a different and lower ceiling on the polish.
What people ask, usually quite late at night.
How long should it be?
You give it a length and it writes to that, and it returns the same speech cut to roughly half — the version you will be grateful for when the meal overruns or the speech before yours does not stop. The honest answer to what the number should be is that it depends where you sit in the running order and how many of you are speaking, not on a rule somebody can hand you. If three people speak, three good short speeches beat one long one and two impatient ones. Ask whoever is running the day what slot you have.
I barely know him. I am marrying his sister.
Then say exactly that in the answer about how you know them, and give it the small amount you genuinely have rather than padding it out. It asks for two or three real moments — what happened, where, who was there, why it mattered — and it writes from those and nothing else. It will not manufacture a friendship you do not have. A short speech built on one true afternoon lands. A long one built on generic warmth is the one people check their phones through.
Someone close to them has died. Do I mention it?
That is your call and it stays your call. It will not decide for you and it will not slip a bereavement in because the occasion seems to invite one. There is a field for people to thank and a field for what must not be mentioned, and both are honoured exactly. If you do want it in, write what you actually want said and it will be handled quietly and once, early, rather than as a tonal swerve in the middle. If you do not, name it in the do-not-mention answer and it will not appear anywhere.
There is an ex everybody remembers and nobody wants named.
Two things stop it. The first is that it writes only from what you supply, so an ex you do not mention does not exist as far as the draft is concerned. The second is a standing rule that holds regardless of what you supply: no material about exes, weight, money or anybody's past relationships, even if you hand it a story you personally find funny. That rule has cost a lot of best men a laugh and saved rather more of them a room. Anything else off limits goes in the same answer.
I am not funny and I do not want to try to be.
Then say so in the tone answer, and you get a sincere speech rather than a comic one with the jokes removed, which is a different and much worse object. Warm, dry, mostly serious and plain are all instructions it takes. The measure of a wedding speech was never laughs; it is whether the people it is about feel accurately described in front of everybody they know. That is done with specifics, and the specifics come from you rather than from the writing.
The best man and I will end up thanking the same people.
Very likely, and it is the most common way a good running order goes flat. Tell it who is in the room and who you intend to thank, and put anyone you know is being covered elsewhere into the do-not-mention answer. It is worth one message between you beforehand, because it is the only item on this list you cannot fix on the day. What comes back includes cue cards in running order, so you can see where your thanks fall and move them if the other speech gets there first.
I write perfectly well and I freeze reading aloud.
It writes for the mouth rather than the page — short sentences, plain words, pauses where the breath goes — and it returns delivery notes beside the speech covering pace, where to stop, and where to look up. The cue cards matter more than people expect, because what actually goes wrong when you freeze is losing your place in a wall of text, not forgetting the words. One line per card, in order. Read it out twice beforehand and change anything your mouth objects to. It is your speech; the draft is not precious.
Ready to write it?
The questions take about ten minutes to answer honestly, and that ten minutes is where the whole speech comes from. Have your two or three moments in mind before you start.
Top up once. No subscription. About 28p — never more than 40p.