What fits in three minutes
| Section | Time | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Hook opening | 0:00–0:25 | 55 |
| One full story | 0:25–1:30 | 150 |
| What it says about them | 1:30–2:00 | 70 |
| Turn to the couple | 2:00–2:35 | 80 |
| Sincere close and toast | 2:35–3:00 | 65 |
The single hardest discipline is accepting one story instead of two. Speakers cut adjectives and keep both stories, which produces two thin accounts instead of one vivid one. Cut the story, keep the detail.
Why shorter usually wins
- A room's attention for a single speaker is genuinely finite, and it is shorter after dinner and drinks.
- Short speeches cannot drift, so they cannot lose the room.
- Nervous speakers deliver short speeches better, because there is less to go wrong.
- If several people are speaking, brevity is a gift to everyone who follows you.
- Nobody in the history of weddings has complained that a speech was too short.
When you need the longer version
Go to four or five minutes only if you have two genuinely different stories, you are a confident speaker, and you are one of no more than three people speaking. Otherwise the shorter version is the better speech, not the compromise.