Former One Show scribe turned professional wedding speech writer who helped Scott Mills now sets sights on AI service
A professional wedding speech writer who helped radio presenter Scott Mills prepare for his big day and has spent years “bringing the rom-com vibes” to marriage ceremonies is introducing an AI service to affordably rescue brides and grooms leaving it late.
Heidi Ellert-McDermott, 47, who lives in Wootton-under-Edge near the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, had a career as a TV director and scriptwriter for popular programmes including BBC’s The One Show, ITV’s This Morning and then Richard Hammond’s 5 O’Clock Show before starting her wedding speech writing business in 2015.
Ms Ellert-McDermott has also written for famous faces and most recently received public praise from BBC Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills, who married his partner Sam Vaughan in Spain on June 1.
The writer said the radio DJ contacted her just two weeks before they were due to tie the knot to craft a funny, heart-warming speech in front of their guests, which she described as “amazing”.
“I understand how to start a story, get the audience involved and try and include some humour and all the writer-y techniques.
“The main core of his work was obviously thanking people. Then I left him a little section in there just about his own thoughts about me.
“Coming away from that I did find the speeches were my favourite part of the day… I really saw everyone, I really laughed with everyone, I hopefully said the things to my friends that I would never, ever get a chance to do in any other opportunity in life.
“I don’t think you do get these chances very much to even pay tribute to your parents or anything. So I love the love of it, but I love the laughter as well.”
She said it was “amazing” to get a shout-out from the radio presenter as many of her customers do not admit to seeking help with their wedding speeches.
“Most of our clients won’t even tell their partner they’ve got help and so it was amazing that Scott confessed to it,” she said.
“(Mills) confessed on his Instagram, tagged us in and we immediately got 300 more followers on our socials.”
Ms Ellert-McDermott worked with one of her writers named Ed to create a funny speech for the couple.
“He came to us quite late in the day so maybe only a fortnight before (the wedding).
“He’s a really nice guy. They’re both nice guys. What’s really good is when couples are really open and give us lots of material to work with.”
Ms Ellert-McDermott believes the wedding industry in the UK remains old-fashioned, with some questioning why her services exist.
“People will say: ‘That’s his one job. He’s still getting help. He’s got to do that and sweat it out,’ but what I would say is don’t see (your speeches) as a chore and see them as an opportunity.”
To help couples write their speeches, Ms Ellert-McDermott said every client will receive a questionnaire to jot down all of their thoughts and draw answers beyond the generic material you might find on the internet.
“What do you argue about? How are you different? How are you similar? What are the little quirks your partner might like to change about you?”
The writer, who also offers delivery speech sessions teaching people how to deliver their speeches on the big day, advised people to laugh at their own gags.
“I encourage people to giggle along to their own jokes, because sometimes people need to have permission to laugh, and they need that pause as well,” she said.
In some cases, she has to remind people, particularly best men, to tone down some of their jokes to make it more wedding-appropriate as well as deal with clients who might try to bring up touchy subjects.
“We also have to rein in a lot of best men when it comes to the roasting element of it and how inappropriate some jokes can be because even if they think the groom’s going to be fine with it, his bride might not be or even the mother of the bride might not be,” she said.
Her top tips for writing a wedding day speech are to “bring the rom-com vibes” and avoid generic phrases found on the internet.
“Really concentrate on good storytelling. The power of a good story can’t be over exaggerated because humans are programmed to care about stories,” she said.
“Bring the rom-com vibes, basically. No matter what your role – father, groom, bride – everyone wants that sense of fun, but also the sentiment and poignancy of life.”
“We started thinking about AI over a year ago and obviously (I) was worried that it would take over our service. We did some research into it and also thought AI can’t possibly be as good as our human writers,” she explained.
“What we did see in our research is it does have the potential to be very funny, so we thought we’d create a Speechy AI.
“We’ve created this recipe of how we, as Speechy, write wedding speeches.
“We’ve devised the best questions to get the best out of people and then what we’re going to do is – from July 12 – customers will get three different versions of an AI speech that they will then be able to pick their favourite and further personalise if they want.
“Some people might think the prospect of working with AI on a romantic speech is a bad thing to do, but it just aids people in packaging up their thoughts better and can help people who really struggle with creating original humour.”
To find out more about Speechy, visit: www.speechy.com.