Wedding speech order, and how long each speech should be

Every guide to speech order agrees on the order and then stops. The order is rarely what goes wrong at a wedding. A speech that was meant to last three minutes and runs to twelve is. So this guide does the order quickly, then gives you a way to set the length of each speech that a nervous speaker can actually follow.

Step 1: Choose who speaks

Start from who you want to hear, not from a list of roles. Tradition gives you a short list:

• The hosts. Whoever is hosting the reception, often one or both sets of parents, welcomes the guests. The Emily Post Institute notes that the couple's parents often toast each other's families.
• The maid of honor and the best man. The Emily Post Institute calls the best man's toast the most formal of the wedding toasts, and says it is fine if it is the only one.
• The two of you. Optional, and now common: a short thank-you to your guests, your families and each other.

That is four speakers, and four is plenty. Each speaker you add takes five or six minutes from the dancing. If more people want to speak, the rehearsal dinner is the place for them: it is a smaller room, the toasts there are expected to be looser, and nobody is waiting for the first dance.

Two people in a couple can share one speech, and so can two best friends. It is one slot, not two.

Step 2: Put them in order

Two traditions are worth knowing, and then you can choose freely.

The American order opens with the host's welcome, as soon as guests have a glass. The Emily Post Institute puts the best man's toast after all the guests have been given champagne or a non-alcoholic alternative, and the parents ahead of the couple. Most couples today run it as:

1. A welcome from the hosts
2. The maid of honor
3. The best man
4. The two of you

The UK order, as Bridebook gives it, is the father of the bride, the groom, then the best man, usually after the meal.

A good rule when you change it: open with the steadiest speaker and end with the one who will make the room laugh, then hand over to the two of you. If one speaker is very nervous, put them first, so they can enjoy their dinner.

Step 3: Decide when the speeches happen

There are three choices, and each one suits a different crowd:

• After dinner is the classic slot. Everyone is fed and settled, and the speeches lead straight into the first dance.
• Before dinner, as soon as everyone is seated. Bridebook notes this is becoming more common, because nervous speakers can then eat. Hungry guests are less patient, so keep it short.
• Between courses. Split the speakers across the meal, for example the welcome before the starter and the rest after the main course. Tell your caterer, because it changes when they serve.

Whichever you choose, put it on your wedding day timeline with a start and an end time.

Step 4: Give each speech a length in minutes

The advice on length is not the same everywhere. The Emily Post Institute says the best toasts last a minute or two, three at most. Bridebook suggests aiming for around five minutes per speech. Both are fine. What matters is that every speaker knows their own number and that the numbers add up.

A worked example: 7:00 pm to 7:30 pm

Our wedding day timeline builds a Nashville wedding with the speeches at 7:00 pm and the first dance at 7:30 pm. That is a 30-minute slot. Here it is, filled:

The speeches add up to 16 minutes. The introduction and each handover from one speaker to the next get a minute, the short gap Bridebook suggests so guests can top up their drinks: that is 4 minutes. That puts the last word at 7:20 pm and leaves 10 minutes spare.

The spare time is not wasted. Speeches run long, someone has to find their notes, a microphone needs adjusting. If nothing runs over, you start the first dance early and nobody minds.

The rule for any slot: add the speeches, add a minute for each handover, and keep at least a quarter of the slot spare. If the sum does not fit, shorten a speech or move one to the rehearsal dinner. Do not shrink the spare time.

Step 5: Turn minutes into words

"Keep it to five minutes" is hard to follow while writing. A word count is easy, and every phone counts words. Ask each speaker to work out their own rate once:

1. Take any 100 words they have written.
2. Read them aloud at the pace they would use in a room, with a timer.
3. Divide 100 by the seconds it took, and multiply by 60. That is their words per minute.
4. Multiply that by the minutes in their slot.

Say the best man reads 100 words in 45 seconds. That is 100 ÷ 45 × 60 = 133 words a minute, so his 5-minute slot is about 665 words. A slower speaker who takes 55 seconds for the same 100 words speaks at about 109 words a minute, and gets about 545 words for the same slot.

Two adjustments make the number honest. Laughter and pauses take time that the reading did not, so take about a tenth off if the speech has jokes in it. And a speaker who reads from a phone tends to speed up, so ask them to rehearse it once, standing, with the timer running.

Send each speaker their slot, their word count and the time they go on, about a month before the wedding. It is a kind thing to do: they no longer have to guess.

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Who runs it on the night

Someone has to hold the microphone between speakers and call each one up. Usually that is the DJ or the band leader, sometimes a host or a friend acting as master of ceremonies. Give them the order, the names spelled the way each person says them, and the time the first dance has to start. Our guide to what a wedding DJ costs covers what else to send them.

Decide between the two of you who will give the signal if a speech runs far over. It should be neither of you on the night: that is the point person's job, or the DJ's.

Keeping the order where everyone can see it

The speech order belongs to the day, not to a separate document. In Yes, I Do, the day screen has a speeches moment among the usual ones, with a start and an end time and a note. Write the speakers there in order with their minutes, and your partner sees the same order on their phone and can change it when a speaker is added or drops out.

Questions

Sources

• The Emily Post Institute: The toast, for the best man's toast coming first and being enough on its own, the parents' toasts, the toast after every guest has a glass, and the best toasts lasting a minute or two, three at most.
• The Emily Post Institute: The groom's toast, for the parents toasting ahead of the groom at the reception.
• Bridebook: wedding speech order, for the traditional UK order, speeches after the meal or more often before it, around five minutes per speech and short gaps between speakers.