Wedding toast
A wedding toast is the only speech where half the room is holding a phone and the other half is holding a glass. It has to be short, it has to land a laugh early, and it has to end on the couple rather than on you. Podiumi builds it from the memories you actually have: the day you met them, the thing they did that told you who they are, the moment you knew this one was different.
Usual length
2–4 minutes
The shape it takes
- 01Who you are
- 02How you know them
- 03Two or three memories
- 04Who they are now
- 05The toast
Where these go wrong
- Running long — after four minutes the room starts checking the bar.
- Inside jokes that only six people understand.
- Old relationship references, and anything the couple's grandparents would not enjoy.
- Forgetting to actually raise a glass at the end.
What to dig out before you start
Two to five of these, written as fragments, is everything the tool needs. Specific beats impressive every single time.
Open the writing room- 01How you met them, and what you thought of them at first.
- 02A small, specific thing they did for someone else.
- 03The moment you realised the two of them were serious.
- 04Something they are teased about that is also secretly a virtue.
Finished wedding speeches
Lightly funny · 3 min
The one about the flat tyre
For anyone I haven't met yet — I'm Dan, Ellie's older brother, and I have been told to keep this shorter than the last speech. I intend to succeed by roughly forty seconds.
November, two years ago. My car gave up on a road with no lights and no signal worth the name. Ellie drove ninety minutes in the rain, changed the tyre herself, refused a cup of tea, and has never mentioned it since. That is the entire person, in one story.
Sam, you proposed three times. Twice she thought you were joking. I'd like the record to show that the third time worked mainly because you finally stopped grinning.
- For anyone I haven't met —
- I'm Dan. Ellie's older brother.
- Shorter than the last speech.
- November. No lights, no signal.
- Ninety minutes in the rain.
- Never mentioned it again.
- Charge your glasses.
- To Ellie and Sam.
Heartfelt · 3 min
Nineteen years of knowing exactly where I stood
I have known her for nineteen years, and I have never once had to wonder where I stood with her.
We met in a queue for a bathroom at a party neither of us wanted to be at. She said something unrepeatable about the host. I decided immediately that this was a person worth keeping.
Six hours in a hospital corridor, and the worst coffee I have ever been handed. She didn't say anything useful. She wasn't trying to. She was just there, which turned out to be the useful part.
- Nineteen years.
- Never once wondered where I stood.
- Hospital corridor. Six hours.
- Terrible coffee.
- She didn't say anything useful —
- she wasn't trying to.