You have been asked to give a wedding toast. Maybe you said yes before you really thought about it, and now the wedding is six weeks away and you are staring at a blank page. You know the couple better than anyone. You have the stories. You just cannot seem to get the words out in a way that sounds like you and not like a greeting card.
ChatGPT can help with this. But if you just ask it to "write a wedding toast," you will get something that sounds like every other wedding toast ever given: polished, warm, and completely hollow. This guide shows you how to give it enough to work with so the toast actually sounds like it came from you.
First, how to get started
If you have never used ChatGPT before, here is all you need to do. Go to chatgpt.com and make a free account. It takes about two minutes. Once you are in, you will see a box at the bottom of the screen. Type your message there and press Enter. That is it. You cannot break anything, and if the answer it gives you is not right, you can just tell it so and ask again.
Why a plain request gives you a generic toast
When you type "write a wedding toast for my best friend Sarah," ChatGPT has almost nothing to go on. It does not know how you talk. It does not know whether you are the kind of person who makes a room laugh or the kind who makes a room cry. So it guesses, and its guess is the average of every toast it has ever seen.
The fix is to give it two things before you ask for anything: samples of your own writing, and the specific story you want to tell.
Step one: give it samples of how you actually write
This is the most important step. Find two or three things you have written that sound like you. A long text message to a close friend. An email where you were telling a funny story. A card you wrote for someone's birthday. Even a Facebook post works. They do not need to be polished. They need to be real.
Copy those into ChatGPT and tell it: "Here are some things I have written. Read them and figure out how I write. Notice my sentence length, my tone, whether I use humor, how formal or casual I am."
ChatGPT will pull out patterns from what you give it: things like whether your sentences tend to be short or long, whether you lean toward warmth or humor, how you start and end thoughts. The more samples you give it, the more it has to work with.
Step two: pick one story and tell it plainly
A great wedding toast is almost always built around one specific moment. The time you both got lost driving to a concert and ended up having the best night of the trip. The way she described him after their third date. The thing he did when her dad was in the hospital.
Before you write anything, just tell ChatGPT the story in your own words, as if you were telling it to a friend on the phone. Messy is fine. Details are good. "We were at this dive bar in Nashville and she turned to me and said..." is much more useful than "they have always been there for each other."
The copy-paste block to use
Here is the full set of instructions to give ChatGPT. Copy this, and change the parts in [square brackets] to your own details.
I need you to write a wedding toast for me to deliver out loud. First, read these writing samples and learn how I write: [paste your writing samples here]. Now here is the story I want to tell: [describe the story in your own words]. The couple is [names], and I am the [best man / maid of honor / father of the bride / etc.]. The tone should be [warm and a little funny / mostly heartfelt / light and celebratory]. Write the toast in my voice, using short sentences and everyday words, the way I would actually say it out loud. Do not use formal or stiff language. Do not use phrases that sound like a computer wrote them. Include the story I told you. End with something genuine, not a cliché. After the draft, give me a confidence score from 0 to 100 for how closely it matches my writing style, and tell me what you would change to get that score higher.
Here is what that looks like filled in with realistic details:
I need you to write a wedding toast for me to deliver out loud. First, read these writing samples and learn how I write: [three text messages pasted here, including one where I'm telling a funny story about a road trip]. Now here is the story I want to tell: Marcus and I have been friends since college. The night he met Diane, he called me at midnight just to say "I think I met someone." He never does that. I want to tell that story and connect it to who he is as a person. The couple is Marcus and Diane, and I am the best man. The tone should be warm and a little funny. Write the toast in my voice, using short sentences and everyday words, the way I would actually say it out loud. Do not use formal or stiff language. Do not use phrases that sound like a computer wrote them. Include the story I told you. End with something genuine, not a cliché. After the draft, give me a confidence score from 0 to 100 for how closely it matches my writing style, and tell me what you would change to get that score higher.
What to do with the first draft
Read it out loud. This matters. A toast is a spoken thing, and your ear will catch what your eye misses. If a sentence makes you stumble, shorten it. If a phrase does not sound like something you would say, change it. If the story is there but the feeling is off, tell ChatGPT exactly that: "This part sounds too formal. I would say it more like this: [your version]." Then ask it to rewrite from scratch using that feedback.
You can go back and forth as many times as you need. Each round, it gets closer. Keep going until you would be comfortable reading it cold at the reception.
One thing to watch for: phrases that feel smooth but hollow. Things like "from this day forward, your journey begins." If something sounds like it could be on a stock photo, cut it or ask ChatGPT to replace it with something specific to your story.
A few small things that make a big difference
Keep the toast between two and three minutes when read aloud. That is roughly 300 to 450 words. Shorter is almost always better.
Pick one story, not four. Four stories means none of them land.
End on the couple, not on yourself. The last thing the room hears should be about them.
One last thing
If you want a second opinion on the instructions you put together before you hand them to ChatGPT, fixmyprompt.net/try will check them and suggest improvements for free, up to three times a day.
Now go write something that will make them cry in the good way.
Sources
- OpenAI Developer Community: https://community.openai.com
- Ruben Hassid: https://www.rubenhassid.com
- Andrew Bolis: https://andrewbolis.com
- Medium: https://medium.com
Sources
- https://medium.com/@syedhidayat901/5-prompts-that-make-chatgpt-sound-exactly-like-you-not-like-chatgpt-4646f15f16cf
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ruben-hassid_how-to-prompt-chatgpt-to-write-exactly-activity-7352291141414748160-ldib
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/andrewbolis_copy-and-paste-this-prompt-to-make-chatgpt-activity-7389260625169920000-Bnst
- https://community.openai.com/t/ask-for-help-what-is-the-ideal-prompt-to-make-the-content-more-humanized/1124343
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11ux9v4luK4
- https://medium.com/@dutttarush9360/i-tried-125-chatgpt-prompts-heres-the-only-one-that-sounds-human-074d45fe252e