The Speech Surgery: how long is too long?

My groom says he's finished his speech and he's really happy with it but it's almost 2,000 words long. Is that too much?

Yes. All speeches should be under ten minutes long. It seems obvious but I've seen several speeches (generally the best men) go well over half an hour, oblivious to the yawns or heckling. That's no more than 1,300 words maximum, allowing for pauses or laughter on the day. Remind your fiancé that his first draft is just the start of the writing process.

As Ernest Hemingway reportedly said 'The first draft of anything is sh*t.' And that's someone who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. The public speaking expert, Alan Berg, also points out: 'There's the expression, 'If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter'. The quote is thought to have derived from the writing legend Mark Twain and it goes to show how hard the editing process can be.

With Speechy's Edit Service, the main thing we do is make the speech punchier. We look at the overall structure and see if all the stories and lines are actually necessary. Do they really add much? Generally, the shorter the sentence, the briefer the story, the more impact it will have.

Test the theory out. Save your first draft but then get busy with that delete function. Cut your word count by a third. Do you lose much? The editing process can feel brutal but it's vital. It might mean you have to drop some of your favourite lines but no one will miss them. Your guests didn't know they existed. To quote Coco Chanel, "Before you leave the house, look in the mirror and take one thing off". Make every sentence matter.

After working through the text version of the speech, it's now time to start reading your speech out loud and editing the audio version! We don't speak in the same form as we write, the sentence construction is different, so does your speech feel overly formal? Are there sections or words that you keep tripping over? Does the punchline need to be moved?

As Alan Berg says, 'Your mind doesn't get tongue-tied, your tongue does, so reading your speech out loud is essential in perfecting your speech.'

For more inspiration check out speechy.com/groom-speech-examples