Do You Need a Wedding Speech Writer? (Your Options, Honestly)
Hiring a wedding speech writer, using AI, or writing it yourself: here's what each option actually costs and when each one makes sense.
Related: AI Wedding Speech Writer : how SpokenVow compares to every other option.
"Wedding speech writer" gets tens of thousands of searches every month. Most of those searches come from people who've just been asked to give a speech, realized they don't know how to start, and are now wondering if paying someone to write it is a thing.
It is. It's also not the only option. Here is an honest look at all three.
The three options
Option 1: Write it yourself. Free, but not easy. Takes real time and a willingness to be honest about whether your first draft is actually good.
Option 2: Hire a human speech writer. A real profession. Expect to pay $150 to $800 depending on experience and turnaround. You get a professional who knows how speeches work.
Option 3: Use an AI tool. Ranges from free (generic tools with caps) to around $99 for a structured tool designed specifically for wedding speeches.
Each one works. Each one has a case where it makes more sense than the others. The choice depends on your budget, your skills, your timeline, and how much the speech matters.
Writing it yourself
This is the right answer for some people. Those people tend to be confident with words, have a clear story they want to tell, and have enough time to actually do it properly.
"Enough time" means at minimum 3 to 4 hours. That is not 3 to 4 hours staring at a blank page. It means: thinking through what you actually want to say (45 minutes), writing a messy first draft (an hour), letting it sit, then reading it back and realizing the first paragraph needs to go (another hour), and then revising until it sounds like something a person would actually say out loud (whatever is left).
Most people underestimate how long this takes. Most people also overestimate how good their first draft is. The best test is to read it out loud to yourself in a room alone, at the pace you would actually deliver it. If you stumble, a live audience will too. If it runs over five minutes, it is probably two minutes too long. Most first drafts are.
The other honest thing: writing well is a skill. You may have it. You may not. If you've spent years writing emails and Slack messages but haven't written anything narrative in a while, writing a speech that makes a room laugh and then go quiet at exactly the right moments is harder than it looks from the outside.
Hiring a human speech writer
This is a real profession and there are genuinely good practitioners in it.
What a professional speech writer typically offers: an intake questionnaire or a phone call, a first draft, one or two rounds of revisions. The better ones will push back. They'll ask why you chose that story. They'll tell you if the opening doesn't work. They write enough speeches to know what lands in a room and what doesn't.
The cost range is wide. Budget services start around $150 and often rely on templates with your details filled in. At $300 to $500, you start getting writers with real track records. Above $500, you're usually paying for turnaround speed, a specific specialty (wedding speeches are a niche within the niche), or someone whose name comes recommended.
What you're paying for, more than words on a page, is structural judgment. A good speech writer knows that you don't open with a joke about how nervous you are. They know that three stories is too many. They know how long the audience can hold emotional attention before they need a laugh. These things come from writing a lot of speeches, and they aren't obvious until you've seen them get it wrong.
The downsides are real. You are trusting a stranger with something personal. The final speech may read well and sound flat when you say it, because it was written in a professional's voice, not yours. The best speech writers work hard to avoid this. Not all of them do. And at $500 or more, there is real sticker shock for something the couple will experience once and never read again.
Using an AI tool
The honest version: generic AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot) will give you something generic if you give it generic input. If you type "write a best man speech for my friend Jake who's been my best friend for 12 years" into ChatGPT, you will get a speech-shaped object that says things like "a heart of gold" and "cherished memories." It flows. It means nothing.
This is not a flaw in the technology. It is a flaw in the input. The AI can only work with what you give it, and what most people give it is a list of facts rather than a real story.
The difference between a bad AI speech and a good one is the quality of what you feed in. Specifically: the detail, the specificity, the thing that is true about this person that you couldn't paste into a generic form.
Tools designed specifically for wedding speeches handle this differently. Instead of a form you fill out, they run an interview. They ask follow-up questions. They push on the vague answer. If you say "we've had a lot of adventures together," a good interview doesn't accept that. It asks which one. It asks what happened. It asks what that story says about who this person is.
That is why the output feels different. The AI handles structure, pacing, and language. You supply the actual content, drawn out by the right questions. The result is something that sounds like you thought about it, because in a sense you did.
Price range: $0 for free-tier general tools (usually capped, usually generic) up to around $99 for tools built specifically for speeches. SpokenVow falls in this range. The interview is the whole product.
How to choose
There is no universally right answer.
If you're a confident writer with 4 or more hours free, write it yourself. You don't need to pay for this. Use the time you would spend researching tools to start drafting.
If this speech matters a lot and budget is not the issue, hire a human writer. The good ones charge accordingly. Get a recommendation if you can, read their samples, and make sure they work conversationally rather than just sending you a form.
If you want something that sounds personal but you don't have the writing skills or the time, use an AI tool with a good intake process. The question to ask before buying anything is: does this tool ask me questions, or does it give me a form? A form captures what you already know how to say. An interview draws out what you didn't know you needed to say.
If you're giving a short toast under two minutes, honestly, any of the three options will work. A two-minute toast is a hook, one specific thing, and a closing line. It is not a speech. The stakes are lower and the format forgives a lot.
One thing true of all three
The worst outcome is having nothing written. The second worst is having something written that doesn't sound like you.
Whatever path you choose, do one thing before the wedding: read it out loud. Not in your head. Out loud, in a room, at the pace you'll actually deliver it. This is the only reliable way to know if it works. Sentences that look fine on a page sound wrong when spoken. Timing that seems right in your imagination falls apart in real time.
If you read it aloud and you'd be proud to say it in front of a room, you're done. That's the standard. Everything before that step is just drafting.
Keep reading:
If you want to see what the AI route looks like, SpokenVow starts with an interview, not a form. You'll be asked specific questions about the couple, the stories that matter, and the things that make them them. The speech that comes out the other end is built from those answers.
