We study the dynamics of cosmological phase transitions in the case of small velocities of bubble walls, vw<0.1. We discuss the conditions in which this scenario arises in a physical model, and we compute the development of the phase transition. We consider different kinds of approximations and refinements for relevant aspects of the dynamics, such as the dependence of the wall velocity on hydrodynamics, the distribution of the latent heat, and the variation of the nucleation rate. Although in this case the common simplifications of a constant wall velocity and an exponential nucleation rate break down due to reheating, we show that a delta-function rate and a velocity which depends linearly on the temperature give a good description of the...