Celebration of Life Speech Examples, Five Complete Speeches

A celebration of life speech is a short tribute, usually two to four minutes, that tells one or two true stories about the person and thanks the room. It is lighter than a funeral eulogy, and the room is usually standing rather than seated. Five complete examples are below.

The service might be in a garden, a function room, a surf club, a back yard. It might be six weeks after the death, or six months. Someone has asked you to say something, and now you are looking at a phone screen at eleven at night.

Here is what makes this harder than it sounds. A celebration of life is meant to be warm. You may not feel warm. You are being asked to be the person who lifts the room while you are still carrying the thing that happened.

You do not have to fake it. What follows is five complete speeches, written out in full, each one for a different kind of room and a different kind of person. Read them aloud. Take the shape of the one that fits, put your own names and details in, and cut whatever is not true.

How a celebration of life speech is different from a eulogy

A eulogy is delivered at a funeral, usually beside the body, usually within a week of the death. A celebration of life speech is delivered at a separate gathering, often weeks or months later, and its job is to put the person back in the room rather than to mark that they died.

That difference changes five practical things about what you write:

• It is shorter. Two to four minutes, not five to seven, because there are usually several speakers.
• You introduce yourself. There is often no order of service, so half the room does not know who you are.
• The room is standing. People are holding drinks and plates. Long builds do not hold.
• Laughing is allowed. At many of these it is actively wanted.
• Nothing has to be solemn. You can say the funny thing first and the serious thing last.

Five complete celebration of life speeches

Each one below is written out in full and can be read aloud as it stands. Change the names, the objects and the dates, and cut any line that is not true about your person. They are deliberately in five different registers, because the room you are standing in is not the room somebody else is standing in.

1. For a father, at a service held weeks after the funeral

Thank you all for coming. For those I have not met, I am Ellen, Ray's daughter.

We buried my father six weeks ago, on a Tuesday, in the rain, with eleven people there. This is the part he would have actually liked. All of you in his garden, eating his tomatoes.

I want to tell you two things about him.

The first is about the shed. My father built a shed in 1989 and never finished it. The door hung on one hinge for thirty-one years. Every Christmas one of us would say, Dad, the door. And every Christmas he would say, I know, it is on the list. When we cleared the shed out in August we found the second hinge, still in its packet, on the shelf above the bench. He had bought it. He had put it where he would see it. He just never got to it, because somebody always needed a bike fixed or a car jumped or a fence put back up after a storm, and he was the man they rang.

The second thing is smaller. When I was nine I came last in a swimming race. Properly last, half a pool behind. He did not say well done, because it would have been a lie, and he did not say better luck next time. He waited until we were in the car and then he said, you finished, some of them stopped. That was it. That is the whole speech he gave me. I have thought about it roughly once a month for thirty years.

He was not a man of many words and he would think this was already too many. So I will finish the way he finished every phone call, which was abruptly and without warning.

Right. Love you. Bye.

Thank you for being here. Eat something. He would have hated the food going to waste.

2. For a friend who did not want anyone being sad about it

I am Marcus. I knew Dan for nineteen years, which he would want me to point out is longer than any of his relationships.

Dan left instructions. Actual instructions, in a note, in a drawer, which we found because he had told four separate people where it was in case one of us died first. Point one, no hymns. Point two, no open microphone, because, and I am quoting, someone will say I was a legend and I was not, I was a quantity surveyor. Point three, someone has to say the thing about the caravan.

So. The caravan.

In 2011 Dan bought a caravan for four hundred pounds from a man in Kettering. It had no wheel on one side. He towed it home on three wheels and a plank. When we asked him why he had bought a caravan with three wheels he said, and this is the most Dan sentence ever spoken, because nobody else was going to.

He kept it for twelve years. We went to Wales in it eight times. It leaked from above the sink in a way that only ever happened when it was not raining. He named it Deborah. He put a Deborah nameplate on the door. He was forty-three years old.

Here is the thing I actually want to say, and then I will sit down before I ruin it.

Dan was the person who rang you. Not texted. Rang, on a Wednesday, for no reason, and stayed on for forty minutes about nothing. I have a lot of friends. I had one person who did that. Now I have none, and I am going to have to become that person, which is going to be a great deal of work.

Raise whatever you are holding. To Dan, and to Deborah, who I believe is still in his mother's driveway.

Cheers.

3. The short one, for an open microphone where several people are speaking

My name is Priya and I worked with Anna for six years.

I am going to be quick, because there are a lot of us who want to speak and Anna hated a long meeting.

Three things.

She was the person who noticed. When my father was ill and I had not told anyone at work, Anna put a coffee on my desk on the Monday and said nothing about it, and did the same thing every Monday for four months. I never worked out how she knew. I never asked. I found out later she was doing it for two other people on our floor as well.

She was funny in a very quiet way. If you were not listening you missed it. She once described a client, in a meeting, to his face, as refreshingly confident, and he thanked her.

And she was better at her job than she ever let on. She rebuilt the whole scheduling system in 2019 and it still runs. Almost nobody outside our team knows she did it, because she signed the email from the department instead of from herself.

That is all I have. I am not going to say she would have wanted us to be happy today, because I do not know that, and she would have hated me speaking for her.

I will say that I am glad I got six years. I would have liked more.

If you worked with her and you are sitting there wondering whether to get up, get up. Say the small thing. The small things are what she was made of.

4. For a long life, where the room is genuinely ready to celebrate

Good afternoon. I am Tom, one of Nancy's fourteen grandchildren. There are fourteen of us. She could name us all, in birth order, at ninety-four, which is more than my mother can manage with four.

Nancy was born in 1931 and died in June, which means she got ninety-four years, and I want to be honest about what that does to a day like today. We are sad. We are also not shocked, and there is a kind of permission in that. She was ready. She told us so repeatedly, and with a certain amount of impatience.

So instead of a sad speech, a list. Things Nancy did.

She left school at fourteen. She worked in a shoe shop, then a hospital laundry, then thirty-one years in the same primary school kitchen, where she was known, and I have this from three separate former pupils, as the one who gave you extra.

She learned to drive at fifty-one, after my grandfather died, because until then nobody had let her.

She got on a plane for the first time at sixty-eight, to Malta, complained about the heat for the entire eleven days, and then went back every year for a decade.

She had a scratch card habit she believed was a secret.

She won forty pounds once and did not tell anyone for six weeks.

She told me, when I was twenty-two and had made a mess of things, that I had plenty of time and that I should stop performing my own funeral. I have never been told off that precisely before or since.

Ninety-four years is a long time to be useful to people, and she was useful right to the end, mostly by telling us what we were doing wrong.

There is a tin of her fruit cake on the table by the window. It is from March. She made it in March for today, because she knew. Somebody has to eat it.

Thank you for coming.

5. If you are the one opening the service

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for coming. My name is Sam, and I am Joanne's brother.

Before we start, some practical things, because Jo would want you to know where the toilets are before anything emotional happens. They are through the door at the back. There is tea and there is something stronger, and both are equally fine at three in the afternoon on a day like this. If you need to step outside at any point, step outside. Nobody will think anything of it.

Here is how the next hour or so will go. I am going to say a little about my sister. Then Claire, who was her closest friend for thirty years, is going to speak. Then anyone who wants to say something can come up, and I mean anyone, and it can be one sentence long. Then we are going to play the song she asked for, and then we are going to stay here and talk about her for as long as people want to.

We are calling this a celebration of life, and I have thought about that phrase a lot this month. I do not think it means we are pretending to be happy. I think it means we have decided to spend this afternoon on the part that was good, which with Jo was most of it.

She was forty-seven. She was funny, she was blunt, she was a frightening driver, and she was the first person any of us rang with bad news, because she never panicked and she never made it about herself.

That is all I am going to say for now, because other people knew other parts of her and I would like to hear those parts too.

Claire, come up whenever you are ready.

How do you begin a celebration of life speech?

Say who you are and how you knew the person, in one sentence, then go straight into a story. At a celebration of life there is often no order of service and no minister to introduce you, so a good part of the room does not know your name, and a story that starts before they know who is telling it does not land.

Six openings that work, all of them one or two lines:

• I am Ellen, Ray's daughter. Thank you for being in his garden.
• My name is Marcus. I knew Dan for nineteen years.
• I worked with Anna for six years, and I am going to be quick.
• For those who have not met me, I am the middle son.
• There are fourteen of us grandchildren. I drew the short straw.
• I only knew Peter for the last four years of his life, which is not long, and I am going to tell you about one afternoon of it.

Avoid opening on the death itself, on an apology for being nervous, or on a quotation. If you want more options, the opening lines in our piece on starting a eulogy without freezing at the first line work here too, with the solemn ones taken out.

How long should a celebration of life speech be?

Two to four minutes, which is roughly 250 to 550 words read aloud. That is shorter than a funeral eulogy, which usually runs three to seven minutes, because a celebration of life almost always has several speakers and a looser running order.

Timings, at the slower pace people actually speak at when they are upset, about 135 words a minute:

• 90 seconds, about 200 words. One story and one line about what is now missing. Right for an open microphone.
• 2 minutes, about 270 words. Two short stories, or one told properly.
• 3 minutes, about 400 words. The most common length. Two stories and a close.
• 4 minutes, about 550 words. The longest you should go if other people are speaking after you.
• 6 minutes, about 800 words. Only if you are the only speaker of the day.

If you are over, cut a whole story rather than trimming lines from all of them. A short speech that keeps one full story beats a long one that half tells three. There are worked examples of that at the shorter end in short eulogy examples you can read in under three minutes.

What should you avoid saying at a celebration of life?

Avoid anything about how they died, any line that tells the room how to feel, and any story that needs five minutes of setup. The room has come to have the person back for an afternoon, and those three things all take the person out of it.

• How they died. Leave it out unless the family has already said it out loud themselves.
• A biography read from dates. Born here, moved there, married in 1974. Nobody remembers a single date afterwards.
• She would have wanted us to be happy today. You do not know that, and it sounds like a script rather than a person.
• Inside jokes with no explanation. Either explain it in one line or drop it. Ten people laughing and eighty people waiting is a bad trade.
• The will, the house, and who did and did not visit. Every family has this. None of it belongs in the speech.
• Too much about you. One honest sentence about what you have lost is right. Four makes it your speech instead of theirs.
• An apology for crying. If it happens, stop, breathe, and carry on. Nobody in that room needs an apology.

How to turn one of these into your speech in twenty minutes

Pick the example closest to your room, then replace its content in six passes. Twenty minutes is genuinely enough, and it is better than three hours of staring at nothing.

1. Choose the example above whose room looks most like the one you will be standing in.
2. Write your first line: who you are, how you knew them. One sentence.
3. Write down three true things only you would say. An object, a sentence they actually used, one specific afternoon.
4. Keep the two most specific. Delete the third, even if you like it.
5. Write one plain sentence about what is missing now. Plain is what makes it land.
6. Write a last line you can physically get out. Say it aloud and see whether your voice holds.

Then read the whole thing out loud, standing up, once, with a timer. Standing changes it. If you would rather start from a draft than a blank page, our eulogy writer will put a first version on the page for you from a few answers about them, and you can see the preview before paying anything. What it gives you is something to argue with, which is much easier than an empty screen.

If you think you might not get through it

Put the hardest line early, not at the end, and give a printed copy to one person sitting near the front. That is the whole plan, and it works because the two moments people break down at are the last line and the moment they realise they have lost their place.

Mark your page: a slash where you want to breathe, and the one or two words you must not rush underlined. If your voice goes, stop and count to three. The room will wait, and the room is on your side in a way no other audience ever is. There is more on this in how to deliver a eulogy without crying.

Common questions

What are some good things to say at a celebration of life ceremony?

Say one specific thing they did, one thing they said that you still repeat, and one plain sentence about what is missing. Specifics carry the room: the shed door, the Monday coffee, the caravan with three wheels. General praise does not. If you only have a minute, one story told properly is worth more than a list of qualities.

What is a nice short quote for a celebration of life?

Your own plain sentence about them will beat any quotation, because the room came to hear about this person and not about a poet. If you do want a reading, keep it to two or three lines and put it after your stories rather than at the start. Our collection of eulogy poems and readings, grouped by tone has full texts to choose from.

What is the average length of a celebration of life?

The gathering itself usually runs one to three hours, with the speaking part in the first thirty to forty-five minutes. Individual speeches run two to four minutes each. If you have been given a slot without a time attached, assume three minutes and ask whoever is hosting how many other people are speaking.

What is the best last line of a celebration of life speech?

A short line you can say without your voice going, usually either a direct thank you to the room or something the person themselves used to say. Both of these work: thank you for coming, he would have loved this many people in his garden. Or borrow their own words, the way Ellen borrows the abrupt phone goodbye in the first example above.

What do you say at a celebration of life to the family?

Say their name and one specific memory, then stop. I am so sorry, and then, I worked with Anna for six years and she noticed when I was struggling. That is enough and it is more than most people will give them. Do not ask about the death, and do not say you know how they feel.

Can a celebration of life speech be funny?

Yes, and at this kind of service it often should be, on three conditions: the joke is about something they did rather than about their death, you would have told it in front of them, and the closest family member would laugh. If any of the three is doubtful, cut it. The second example above is built almost entirely on this.

Before Saturday

Pick one of the five, put your own two stories in it, and read it out loud once standing up. That is the entire task, and most people are closer to finished than they think when they start.

If the page is still blank in an hour, start from a draft instead, free to preview, and make it yours from there.