Best Man and Maid of Honour Speeches Editing and Proofreading Services

The speech opens with the story of the stag do, builds through three more stories about drinking, and ends with a toast. Somewhere in the room is the groom's grandmother, his new mother-in-law, and a colleague he invited on a whim. The best man has known exactly one story worth telling for eleven years, and he has told all of it to the wrong nine minutes.

We edit what best men, maids of honour and other wedding party speakers write — best man and maid of honour speeches, groomsman and bridesmaid toasts, speeches from a parent standing in for the traditional role, joint speeches given by two people, and the notes used when a speech is delivered without a script. Our editors work on the version that gets told once, in front of everyone who matters.

The one story is what a wedding speech actually needs, and its failure is a chronology of the friendship with a toast bolted onto the end. Nobody remembers the third anecdote. We work through these so a single story is chosen for what it shows about the couple rather than for how funny it is on its own, since a story that is only funny is forgotten by the drive home and a story that also reveals something is what people quote back for years; so the story is checked against the room — grandparents, colleagues, new in-laws — and anything that only works among the stag party is cut regardless of how good it is; so the groom or bride is teased rather than exposed, given that there is a line between a story that makes someone laugh at themselves and one that makes them flinch, and the speaker is usually too close to see it; so the partner is brought into the speech as someone the speaker actually knows something about, because a speech that is entirely about the school years leaves the new spouse as a stranger at their own wedding; so an ex is never mentioned, as a laugh at that cost is not worth what it costs; so the toast is a single clear sentence rather than a paragraph that trails off, since the room needs to know exactly when to raise a glass; and so it is timed to five minutes read aloud slowly, because nerves speed everyone up on the day. Speeches written this way are the ones guests mention at the next wedding.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including drafts, stories and anything you would rather the couple did not see in advance. We are editors rather than speechwriters-for-hire in the sense of writing your relationship for you, and we offer no view on the couple or what should or should not be told. What we can do is help you find the one story and cut everything that gets in its way.