Maid of Honour Speech: How to Write One, With Examples

Why should the best man get all the laughs? The maid of honour speech is still far from the norm at British weddings, which is exactly why it works so well. The room is intrigued before you have opened your mouth. The bride picked you because you two have shared more than most, so the material is there. The job is deciding which bits everyone else gets to hear, and turning them into something funny and sincere that does not fall apart halfway through the second anecdote. This guide covers what to say, how long to go on for, a structure that works, and a couple of full maid of honour speech examples you can build on.

What a maid of honour speech should cover

Your speech has two jobs. The first is to make people laugh. The second is to say something true about the bride that nobody else in the room is qualified to say.

• Who you are and why you are up there. Plenty of guests only know you as the woman in the matching dress. Put your relationship with the bride in context.
• A short thank you. Short. Everyone else is thanking people too.
• The bride. Her personality, her quirks, her triumphs and her mishaps, told through real stories rather than adjectives.
• The groom. A little. Even if you are not his biggest fan, the bride is, and his mother is sat on table four.
• The couple. Why they fit. Why you think this one is going the distance.
• A toast. Some advice, a quote, a song lyric that means something to the two of you, then glasses up.

The tone to aim for is affectionate fun-poking. You are laughing with the bride, not at her, and the room holds both the mates who want it risqué and the grandparents who very much do not. Unless you are certain a line will not offend anyone, keep it clean and clever.

How long should a maid of honour speech be?

Let quality dictate quantity. The standard advice for any wedding speech is no less than six minutes and no more than ten. We agree with the minimum and think there is a bit of wiggle room on the maximum. If you have material you are comfortable with and confident in (be honest with yourself here), twelve minutes or slightly longer is fine. Nobody sits there with a stopwatch if they are laughing.

What guests actually want is to be entertained and made to feel something. If you suspect you are wandering into too-long territory, have a word with the best man. You will almost certainly have doubled up on a story or two, and striking the overlap is the easiest cut you will make.

Maid of honour speech structure and template

Best men and maids of honour come at the job from different angles, but the structure is the same because the job is the same: entertain the room while talking warmly about someone you love. This is the one we use.

1. Introduction. Who you are, how you know the bride, why she chose you. An opening joke, quite possibly a self-effacing one, warms the crowd. If you are nervous, say so, lightly. Modesty is endearing.
2. Thank yous. Check who else is thanking whom. Do not read a list. Pick one or two people who have had a big, possibly overlooked, role in the day or in the bride’s life.
3. The bride. The main event. Two or three real stories that illustrate who she is, then why she is the best friend, sister or cousin you could ask for.
4. The groom and the couple. How they met, any dating disasters, and why they are so well suited.
5. The toast. Profound or tongue in cheek, your call. Then everybody charges their glasses.

Getting the material before you write a word

Remember the GCSE coursework you left until the night before and got a D for? The bit you skipped was the research. Do not make the same mistake. Grab a pen, a coffee (or something stronger) and ideally someone else who knows the bride well, and start asking questions. What are her characteristics, good and, in the nicest possible way, bad? What makes her unique? What embarrassing things did she do as a teenager? As an adult? How did she meet the groom? Were there dating disasters? And what is it you actually love about her?

When you have a page of notes, grade them ruthlessly. Grade A: must use. Grade B: worth using if there is room. Grade C: binned unless you are desperate. Then look for a thread. If the bride is a teacher, the whole speech could be a school report, grading her on organisation, punctuality and dress sense. If she is famous for being late, you do not just say she is late, you tell them about the time a bit of last-minute duty free held up an entire plane. Specific beats general every time.

Maid of honour speech examples (or maid of honor, for our American readers)

The two speeches below are templates we have assembled from the structure above. They are not transcripts of real speeches, so the names and details are in brackets for you to fill. Steal the shape, not the sentences.

Example 1: the funny maid of honour speech (template)

Good evening everyone. For those who don’t know me, I’m [name], and I’ve been [bride]’s best friend since [year or circumstance]. I am also, as you may have noticed, absolutely terrified, so if I speed up towards the end it’s not because I’m excited, it’s because I want to sit down.

Before I start, a quick thank you to [person], who [specific thing they did for the bride or the day]. The best man has thanked everyone else, and I was told not to double up, so that’s my list.

Now. [Bride]. Where to begin. Most of you know her as [the organised one / the life and soul / the sensible one]. I have known her long enough to know the truth. [Story one: a real incident that shows a well-known trait, with comedy consequences, told quickly and ending on the punchline.]

That was not a one-off. [Story two: a second incident on the same theme, shorter than the first.]

And then she met [groom]. For those who weren’t around at the time, they met [how they met]. I remember the phone call afterwards. She said [her honest first impression], which, [groom], I promise was a compliment. [Groom], I’ll be straight with you: I’ve seen a fair few of them come and go, and you are the first one I didn’t have notes on. You make her laugh, you put up with [the trait from the stories], and you make her happier than I have ever seen her. That’s all any of us wanted.

So I was asked for some advice for the newlyweds. The only thing I’ve got is this: [one line of advice, your own or a quote adapted for the couple]. Everyone, please raise your glasses. To [bride] and [groom]!

Example 2: the heartfelt maid of honour speech for a sister (template)

Hello everyone. I’m [name], and for the last [number] years I have had the dubious honour of being [bride]’s [big / little] sister. Which means I am the only person in this room who has seen her with a perm, so she should be very nice to me for the next ten minutes.

I want to say thank you to Mum and Dad for today, and for everything that got us to today. I know Dad has already said his piece, but he left out the bit about [small, affectionate family detail], so I’m putting it back in.

Growing up with [bride] was [one honest word]. [Story one: a childhood memory that shows who she is, with a laugh in it.] Somewhere along the way she went from being the sister I had to share a room with to the person I ring first about everything. [Brief, specific example of her being there for you.]

Then [groom] turned up. [How they met, or the moment you knew it was serious.] [Groom], the first time you came to a family dinner you [small, kind, funny detail]. I knew then. You are patient, you are kind, and you have somehow convinced her that [groom’s hobby or quirk] is a reasonable way to spend a Sunday. We are all very impressed.

[Bride], you have always looked after everyone else. Today it’s your turn. I love you more than I will ever say out loud, so I’ll say it once, here, and then we can both pretend it didn’t happen.

Please stand and raise your glasses. To my sister and her husband, [bride] and [groom]!

Opening lines for a maid of honour speech

The first thirty seconds decide whether the room is with you. A few approaches that work.

• Own the nerves. If you are shaking, say so, lightly. The room immediately wants you to do well.
• Explain why you, not the best man. “The best man has had his go, and frankly somebody needed to tell you what she’s really like.”
• Start the theme. If you are doing the school report, open with it: “I’ve been asked to give [bride]’s end-of-term report.” The audience then knows the game and enjoys watching you play it.
• Put your relationship in one line. How long, how you met, what she is to you. It is the context the rest of the speech hangs on.

What to avoid: anything you found on the internet. The old best man favourite about the honeymoon in north Wales (the punchline being Bangor) was perhaps funny once, if quite crass, and that once was in the 1980s. There are plenty of others that are less laddish but just as tired. If you want to see how the men do it before you start, our best man speech jokes and one-liners show the shape of a line that lands, and the ones that die.

Maid of honour speech tips

Do

• Research first. Do not write blind. Generate the material, then shape it.
• Thread it. One theme that links the stories makes a speech feel written rather than listed.
• Get real. Tell them the bride is brilliant, then show them with an example. The example is the bit they remember.
• Move along. Stories add depth, but not if it takes two minutes to reach the punchline.
• Write how you talk. The words and phrases you use every day are your personal stamp. Put them on the page and it will sound like you, not like a greetings card.
• Practise. Out loud, on your own, then in front of a trusted friend who will tell you the truth. Then again. The more you know it, the more naturally it comes out. Our page on how to conquer the nerves has more on this.

Don’t

• Plagiarise. Your bond with the bride is exclusive to the two of you. Express your thoughts on it, not somebody’s generic ones.
• Over-thank. Other speakers will cover the florist. Keep your list to one or two people.
• Ignore the groom. It is his day too. Say something nice and mean it. Do not damn with faint praise.
• Double up with the best man. A five-minute chat the week before saves you both telling the same story.
• Get drunk first. One or two to settle you is fine. Hammer the bar afterwards, with our blessing.

On the day

Have a full copy of the speech with you, or prompt cards, even if you know it cold. Knowing the safety net is there is calming, and if you stumble it gets you going again. Try not to simply read it, though, as that comes across wooden. Keep a glass of water nearby, find out where to hold the microphone before you stand up, and remember that a wedding crowd is the most generous audience you will ever face. They have come wanting to enjoy the speeches. Let them.

Your writer: Helene. Helene writes our speeches for women, maid of honour speeches included. In her words: “I love writing and I love weddings, so this is the perfect job for me. I love the process of getting to know the people I write for and the special bond you share.”

If you are sharing the bill with the men, send the best man to our best man speech guide and the groom to our groom speech guide, and if the bride is speaking too, our bride speech page will stop the two of you telling the same story. And if the blank page wins, our speech writing service is there.