If the wedding is tomorrow, read this first
You are not in as much trouble as you think. The gap between a speech written over six weeks and a speech written in one focused hour is much smaller than the gap between a specific speech and a generic one — and specificity is entirely a function of what you remember, not how long you spend.
What you cannot do tonight is write something long. Length needs editing, and editing needs distance. So the plan is: go short, go specific, and rehearse. Three minutes delivered confidently will be received better than five minutes read cold.
The twenty-minute memory exercise
Do not try to think of "a good story". That is why you are stuck. Instead answer these questions out loud, quickly, without editing yourself. Two usable stories will fall out of them.
- When did they do something for you that they never mentioned again?
- What do they do that everyone at this wedding would recognise instantly?
- What is a time you were wrong about them?
- What did you notice the first time you saw them with their partner?
- What would you say about them if you only had one sentence?
Whatever comes out fastest is your material. Speed of recall is a reliable proxy for how vivid a memory is, and vivid is what makes a speech land.
What to cut when you have no time
- Any sentence that explains who someone is before the story starts — work it in during the story instead.
- The second half of every setup. Most stories start one sentence later than people write them.
- Any joke you are not sure about. Tonight is not the night to test it.
- A third story. Two is enough and three is what makes you overrun.
- Thank-yous beyond the essential ones, unless you are the host or the couple.
How ToastPetal handles a genuine emergency
The intake is eight questions and takes about three minutes on a phone. You will see the opening of your speech free, within about a minute of finishing it, so you can judge the quality before paying anything.
After that you get three complete versions — funny, heartfelt and balanced — so you can pick the register that fits the room rather than rewriting from scratch. You can edit the text directly, ask for changes in plain English, and download a PDF formatted to read from at a lectern.
If you are reading this at 11pm the night before: the whole path from here to a printed speech is about fifteen minutes.