A maid of honour speech when you are not the funny one

The best man sits down to a big laugh and you are next. That is where most maid of honour speeches go wrong, because the speaker decides, in about four seconds, that she now has to be funny too. She doesn't. The room has had its comedy. Nobody has stood up yet and said something true about the bride, and that is the job you were actually given.

The maid of honour speech is where the be-funnier instinct does the most damage, because the material you already hold is the best material in the building. You know what she was like at nineteen. You know what she was like the fortnight her mum was in hospital. Nobody else on the running order has that, and none of it needs a punchline bolted on to be worth hearing.

Warmth outranks comedy at a wedding

Laughs are loud and they go fast. What people repeat in the car on the way home is usually short and sincere, something like "I have never seen her this happy", said flat, with no set-up around it. The stag-do material rarely makes it that far.

None of that means be solemn. It means aim at what the guests actually came for. Everyone in that room has given up a Saturday and a chunk of money to watch two people promise each other something, and by the time the speeches start they are already halfway to being moved. A comedian gets no such head start.

Comedy also carries a risk that warmth doesn't. A joke that misses leaves a silence you have to stand in while ninety people look at the tablecloth. A warm line that lands flat costs you almost nothing. The room stays on your side and you carry on to the next one.

Warm is not the same as soppy

Soppy is what people are frightened of, and it is a real failure. It comes from being vague. "She's the most amazing person I've ever met and I love her so much" is soppy because it could be about anyone at the wedding, including the caterer. It gives the room nothing to picture.

The fix is detail. Put this line:

"Katie is the kindest person I know."

next to this one:

When my dad was in hospital in Leeds, Katie drove up every Tuesday for six weeks with a flask of decent coffee and a phone charger, because she had worked out that hospital tea is undrinkable and nobody ever remembers a charger. She has never mentioned it since. I only know how many Tuesdays it was because I counted them.

Nobody has to be told Katie is kind. They work it out themselves, from the flask and the charger, and there is not a joke anywhere in it. Show the thing that made you believe it, then stop.

Four shapes that do not run on jokes

Pick one and commit to it. Speeches sag when they are five half-structures stapled together. If you are her sister as well, the sister of the bride speech works on the same principle with a longer run-up.

One story, told properly

The default maid of honour speech is five stories at forty seconds each, and none of them stick. Take one story and give it the entire speech.

Pick one with a turn in it, a point where something changed. The coach to Edinburgh, when she gave her last twenty pounds to a man outside the station and then had to talk her way home. The interview she nearly didn't go to. Tell it slowly and leave the real detail in: the weather, what she was wearing, who else was there, the exact thing she said. Then land it in one line. "That is the woman Tom is marrying this afternoon."

It is also the safest shape if you are nervous, because there is only one thing to remember. Lose your place in a five-story speech and you are stranded. Inside a single story you always know what comes next, because you were there when it happened.

Before and after

Two portraits side by side: her before she met her partner, and her now. The shape assembles itself and you barely have to signpost it.

Sarah used to plan her holidays in a spreadsheet. Colour coded. Printed. Laminated, on one occasion I have agreed not to go into. Last April she got on a train to Slovenia because Adam had seen a photo of some mountains and thought they looked nice. She sent me one message the whole week. It said "no signal, don't care".

Nobody would call that a joke and it will get a laugh anyway, which is the register to aim for. There is no punchline in it, only an accurate description of somebody. People are funny when the details are right.

The letter

Write the whole speech as a letter to the bride. Address it to her, in the words you would actually use to her, and then read it out.

It sorts the register out on its own. People write differently when they are writing to one person, and most of the padding never gets typed in the first place. It also takes some of the performance out, because you are talking to her rather than to a room.

The risk is that the room feels shut out. Two fixes. Look up and speak to the guests three or four times, with something as simple as "for those of you who only met her at university, this is what she was like before". And make the toast belong to everybody rather than to her.

Three objects

Choose three things that belong to her and hang a paragraph on each. Her car. The green coat. The biscuit tin full of buttons that came from her nan.

Objects carry stories without you having to announce that a story is starting, which is where a lot of speeches go stiff. You can also hold one up. A room looking at the green coat has stopped watching your hands shake.

Three is a useful number here because it builds a rhythm and you can hold it without notes. Two works. Four is pushing your luck at wedding length.

Following a best man who got laughs

Do not open by joking about how you cannot follow that. It sounds modest, and it sets up a comparison you have just told the room you will lose. If you want to mark the change of gear, one flat line does it. "Right. Completely different, this one." Then go.

Slow down. The best man speech is usually delivered fast, because jokes need pace. Coming in noticeably slower is the clearest signal you can send that a different kind of speech has started, and a room adjusts inside two sentences. Nerves speed almost everyone up, so this takes deliberate effort. Mark the pauses on the page in pencil.

The slot is also on your side. Speak after the best man and the room is warm, laughing easily, and no longer braced for whatever happened on the stag do. That is the best audience of the afternoon. If you have any say in the running order, take the slot after him rather than the one before.

Nobody in the room is scoring the two speeches against each other. His job and yours are not the same job, and the guests work that out before either of you stands up.

Length, and reading it aloud

Three to four minutes. Sincerity does not stretch the way jokes do. A best man can push on for eight or nine minutes because a laugh every half minute resets the room's patience. A warm speech has nothing to reset with, so anything past four minutes just feels long.

At a normal speaking pace, three to four minutes is roughly 400 to 550 words. That is a word count, not a timing. Time it as well, standing up and saying it out loud, rather than sitting down reading it in your head.

Read it aloud at least six times before the wedding. Not for memorising. The point is to catch the words you stumble on and swap them for easier ones. Any sentence you trip over twice is too long or has the wrong word in it. If the nerves are the bigger problem, there is more on the ten minutes before you stand up.

What to take out

• Anything that needs explaining. If a story requires "you had to be there", keep it for your table.
• In-jokes with the bridesmaids. Four people laughing while ninety wait is worse than silence.
• The full list of thank-yous. Those belong to the groom and to whoever gives the father of the bride speech, and duplicating them costs you a minute you needed.
• Any mention of an ex. There is no version of that which goes well.
• The apology at the start. "I'm not very good at this" spends your credibility in the first six words, and the room then listens for evidence that you were right.

The one joke worth keeping is the one that only works because it is about her. Anything general, anything you could have found on a list of wedding one-liners, cut it. If you are unsure whether a line is affectionate or just sharp, where the line sits is worth reading before you commit it to the page.

The last thing you say

End on her. Turn, speak to her directly for two or three sentences, then hand the room the toast.

Sarah, we were eleven when we met and the first thing you ever said to me was that my shoes were wrong. You were right. You have been right about most things since, Adam included. Please stand up and raise your glasses to Sarah and Adam.

Give that closing passage the shortest sentences in the whole speech. Long sentences fall apart when your voice goes, and your voice will probably go a little. Short ones you can still get out.