Wedding Speech Examples

Good evening, everyone. For those who don't know me, I'm the best man, which I'm told is a title, not a competition, though I've chosen to interpret it as both.

I've known Dan for twelve years. We met in the first week of university, when he knocked on my door at midnight to ask, with complete sincerity, whether I thought it was too late to learn the trumpet. I said yes. He bought one the next morning. And that, in a single moment, is everything you need to know about Dan: a man who hears the word "no," nods thoughtfully, and then does the precise opposite while making you feel like it was your idea.

He never did learn the trumpet. But he kept the receipt for four years, which he said was "in case the dream came back." The dream did not come back. The trumpet is, as far as I know, still in his mum's loft, waiting.

What I want you all to understand about Dan is that this is how he loves people, too. Stubbornly. Completely. Without ever quite reading the instructions.

Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to start by saying a few words, partly because tradition demands it, and partly because Lucy has informed me that this is the one speech today I'm contractually unable to talk my way out of.

I'll be honest with you, I've started this speech about nine times. I had versions that were funny. I had versions that were so sincere I couldn't read them out loud without needing a moment. And somewhere around the seventh attempt I realised the problem: there is genuinely too much to say, and not enough of it fits into the gap before James stands up and says something far worse about me.

So I've made some choices. I'm going to thank the people who made today happen, I'm going to say one true thing about the woman I've just married, and then I'm going to sit down before I embarrass myself further.

But first, look at this room. Look at the people in it. Every single person here is someone who has, at some point, shaped Lucy's life or mine, and the fact that you're all in one place today is not lost on either of us.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for being here. For those of you I haven't yet met, I'm David, Sophie's father, and as of about four o'clock this afternoon, the man standing between you and your dinner.

I'll try not to keep you long. I've been reliably informed that the test of a good father-of-the-bride speech is whether the kitchen staff are still speaking to you afterwards, and I'd like to stay on their good side.

I want to tell you about Sophie. Not the Sophie you see today, poised, elegant, somehow completely calm, but the one I've known for twenty-nine years. The one who, at the age of six, announced at the dinner table that she intended to become a marine biologist, a ballerina, and the Prime Minister, and saw absolutely no conflict between the three. The one who argued every bedtime as though she were appealing a parking fine. The one who has never, not once in her life, done a single thing because she was told to.

And I have to tell you, watching her walk down that aisle today, entirely on her own terms, I wouldn't change a second of it.

Hello, everyone. I'm Kate, Hannah's maid of honour, best friend of fourteen years, and the person she trusted with this microphone despite knowing me better than anyone alive. A brave decision. We'll see how it ages.

Fourteen years is a long time to know someone. It's long enough to have seen every version of a person, the good, the questionable, and the haircut we agreed in 2014 to never speak of again. And in all that time, through all of it, the thing about Hannah that has never once changed is this: she is exactly the same person whether you're watching or not.

I've seen her be kind when there was nothing in it for her. I've seen her tell me the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for both of us. I've watched her show up, to hospital waiting rooms, to last-minute crises, to one memorable 3am phone call that I will also not be detailing today, every single time, without being asked.

That's who she is. And the reason we're all here is that she finally found someone who sees it as clearly as the rest of us do.