Celebration of life speech examples
Three complete speeches for three moments: opening an event held months after the death, a personal tribute at an informal gathering, and a short toast to close the afternoon.
Last updated 3 September 2026
Before you read them
These are warmer and looser than funeral eulogies, which is right for the format. Notice that each still turns at some point — the laugh opens into something true rather than being the whole speech.
For how to run the event itself when there is no officiant, see how to write a celebration of life speech.
1. Opening an event held months later
The gap is acknowledged once, early, then used — there is detail here that would have been too much at a funeral six months earlier.
For Vernon Ashby, seven months after
About 440 words · roughly three and a half minutes
Thank you all for coming, and thank you for coming in June, which is a strange month to do this in.
Dad died in November. We did the funeral in the week, in the rain, with about thirty of us, and none of us remember any of it. So we decided to do it again properly when we could actually be present for it, and that is why you are standing in a cricket pavilion in sunshine seven months later.
He would think this was an absurd amount of fuss and he would have come early to help set out the chairs.
Vernon Ashby scored for this club for thirty-one years. Not played — scored. He sat in that box, with a pencil, and he kept the book.
I want to explain to the non-cricket people what that means, because it is not nothing. Scoring is three hours of concentration in which you may not go anywhere, cannot lose focus, and receive no credit whatsoever. There is no version of the job where you look good. The only feedback available is when you get something wrong.
He did it every home game for three decades and he was never once thanked publicly, until now, so — thank you, Dad.
He was like that about everything. He did the unglamorous half of every job in his life. He was the treasurer, the driver, the one who stacked the chairs, the one who noticed the guttering.
And I will be honest with you, because it is seven months and I can be: he was quite hard to live with. He was pedantic in a way that could ruin an afternoon. He corrected people. He corrected me at my own wedding, during the speeches, from a table.
But somebody has to keep the book. Somebody has to be the one who writes down what actually happened, accurately, for thirty-one years, in pencil, for nothing.
The book from his last season is on the table by the door. Please have a look at it. It is immaculate.
Right — there is a bar, and it is open. Go on.
2. A personal tribute at an informal gathering
Not opening the event, just one of several people speaking. Note that it starts inside its own story rather than re-introducing the person.
For Sunny Bhatt, given by a friend
About 340 words · under three minutes
In 2016 Sunny convinced eleven of us to do a triathlon.
None of us were athletes. One of us could not swim. Sunny himself had done no training whatsoever and had, it emerged on the morning, entered the wrong distance.
He was magnificent. Not at the triathlon — he came almost last and walked a considerable portion of it — but at the persuading. He had got eleven adults with jobs and children to pay money to be cold in a reservoir at seven in the morning, and he did it entirely by refusing to accept that anybody might say no.
That was his method for everything. Sunny did not ask whether you wanted to do something. He told you when it was happening and expressed mild surprise if you had a conflict.
I have thought about why that worked, because from anyone else it would have been unbearable. And I think it is because he was never trying to get you to do a thing. He was trying to get you out of the house.
He knew, before most of us did, that the default setting of adult life is that you slowly stop doing things. And he decided, apparently around 2011, that this was not going to happen to his friends.
There are eleven people here today who have finished a triathlon and would not have without him.
We are doing it again in September. Same reservoir. He would be furious that we waited.
3. A short toast to close
Under a minute. A toast gives the room something to do and provides a clean ending, which these gatherings otherwise lack.
Closing toast for Delphine Roux
About 150 words · under a minute
Before people start drifting — can I have you for thirty seconds.
Delphine had a rule about wine, which was that a bottle should be opened for a reason but the reason could be extremely small. A haircut. A Tuesday. Someone getting a parking space.
She said that people who save things for occasions end up with a cupboard full of unopened bottles and no occasions.
She was right, and she has now proved it in the most annoying way possible.
So — whatever you have got in your hand. Raise it.
To Delphine. For no reason at all.
What these three have in common
- Each turns. Scoring for thirty-one years for nothing. Getting people out of the house. A cupboard of unopened bottles.
- Each ends by giving the room an instruction — look at the book, the bar is open, raise your glass. Celebrations of life need someone to say what happens next.
- Each is shorter than a funeral eulogy. People are standing.
Also on this site
Our page of funeral speech examples separates the five different speeches given at a funeral, which are not all eulogies. Memorial service speech examples has three memorial speeches, including a workplace memorial and a scattering. How to write a celebration of life speech is for the event nobody is running, where your speech is also the structure. How to write a eulogy walks through the whole thing in six steps, from a blank page to something you can say out loud.