It’s still very much seen as a secret service,” Heidi Ellert-McDermott explains. “I’d say that 97 per cent of our clients don’t tell anyone.” The secret that her clients are keeping from their significant others? It’s nothing remotely salacious – rather than googling gags and hoping for the best, they’ve just hired a ghostwriter to work on their wedding speech.
Ellert-McDermott’s company Speechy “is definitely not a word-of-mouth business”, but over the past eight years, they’ve still managed to find customers all over the world. On the afternoon we speak, she’s already been chatting to fathers-of-the-bride in the United States and in Asia, as well as a bride-to-be in Australia. After more than a decade in TV – where she produced, directed and wrote for programmes, including The Sharon Osbourne Show and Richard Hammond’s 5 O’Clock Show – the idea came to her during a summer in which she spent every other weekend watching friends and loved ones get married.
