Why a deadline is the wrong thing to panic about
Last minute is an advantage if you treat it as a constraint. No time to collect five stories means you will not tell five stories, which is the usual way a wedding speech dies. Ten minutes of answers. Two minutes of reading it out loud. That is the whole remaining plan.
The failure mode tonight is googling jokes. They will sound googled. The material that still works at 11pm is a story you can tell without notes because you were there.
Pick a role above, type the one memory that still makes you laugh, and stop. Then read the opening out loud once. If it sounds like you, unlock the rest. If it does not, you have lost ten minutes and no money.
How it works
0-10 min: dump the only story that matters
How you know them. One scene. What you actually admire. Ignore every other memory. You do not have time to rank them.
10-20 min: pick the role and generate
The wizard is set to two minutes. Leave it there unless someone has given you a longer slot in writing.
20-40 min: read it standing up, out loud
Silent reading does not count. Cut every clause you stumble on. Stumbles are the edit.
40-50 min: put it on cards or your phone
One paragraph per card, or a screen that will not sleep. Then stop rewriting. You need the remaining hours for repetition, not for a better adjective.
What the output sounds like
"I have had eleven months to write this and I used ten of them badly. Here is the only story that survived."
"That is the whole thing. Please raise your glasses. To Maya and Tom."
Questions people actually ask
- The wedding is tomorrow. Is it too late?
- No. The questions take about ten minutes and the draft comes back immediately. What you cannot skip is reading it out loud at least twice.
- How long should a last minute speech be?
- Two to three minutes, roughly 250 to 400 words. Shorter is safer when you have not had a week to practise.
- Is it free?
- The outline and opening line are free, no card. The rest is $29 once if you want it.
- What if I am not funny?
- Then do not spend the night hunting jokes. One true scene, then the sincere line, then the toast. That is a complete speech.
Would rather write it yourself?
How to write a wedding speech: the process, in order