Wedding Speech Writers
Free tool

How long does your wedding speech actually run?

Paste your draft. You get the real running time, including the laughs you have to stand through and the pause while everyone finds a glass, plus a breakdown of which paragraph is doing too much work.

Nothing you paste leaves your browser. There is no server behind this page and nothing is saved.

In the room
0:43

Paste a draft to start

How fast do you speak?

7 seconds each. You have to stand through them, and that time is real.

How this is worked out

Speaking pace at a wedding is slower than conversation. A room of ninety people makes you project, and projecting makes you slow down. The default here is 140 words a minute, which is where most people land when they are reading a prepared speech to a room rather than chatting at a table. 120 is a properly measured pace, the one an emotional speech falls into. 165 is fast, and it is usually nerves rather than a decision.

Laughs are the thing word counters miss. A real laugh at a wedding runs about 7 seconds, and you cannot talk through it, so it is dead time you have to plan for. A speech with eight real laughs is a minute longer than its word count says. The toast adds another 15 seconds or so while people stand up and find something to raise.

The paragraph breakdown flags anything over 45 seconds. That is not a rule about writing, it is a rule about attention: past roughly that point of unbroken talking, a wedding audience starts looking at their drinks. Long paragraphs usually want a beat in the middle rather than a cut.

For reference, the three lengths this site writes to are 400 words, 650 words and 850 words. Paste one in and the timer will agree with the questionnaire, because both read from the same file.

Common questions

How many words is a five minute wedding speech?
About 650 words at a natural delivery pace, before you allow for laughs. Add a few seconds for every laugh you expect and it lands closer to five and a half. If you want a number to write towards, 650 is the one most speeches should aim at.
How long should a wedding speech be?
Four to five minutes is the sweet spot for almost every speech at a UK wedding. Under three and it feels like you did not want to do it. Over six and the room starts to go, no matter how good the material is. The exception is a father of the bride speech at a small wedding, which can run a little longer because the audience is closer to it.
Does this count the laughs?
Yes, if you tell it how many to expect. Each laugh adds 7 seconds, because you have to stand and wait through it rather than talking over it. A speech with eight real laughs is a full minute longer than its word count suggests, and that minute is the one that catches people out.
Is anything I paste saved or sent anywhere?
No. The timer runs entirely in your browser. There is no server behind this page, nothing is stored, and nothing is sent to us. You can disconnect from the internet and it still works.
Why is my speech slower when I read it out loud?
Because almost everyone is. An estimate is arithmetic on a word count; real delivery has pauses, breaths, and the moment where you look up. Use the read-aloud mode on this page to capture your own pace, and trust that number over the estimate.
If it runs long, the problem is usually structure

A speech that runs nine minutes rarely gets fixed by deleting adjectives. It is normally two speeches fighting each other, or one story that has three endings. Answer about ten minutes of questions and you will get a version built to the right length from the start, free to read before you decide. From £49.99.

Write my speech, free →How long it should be