best man speeches

[dan_b]

I second what Steve just said - having recently been Best Man myself and been to more than my fair share of weddings in the last few years, the best Best Man speeches are the ones that are honest, personal about to why you're Best Man to the Groom, a couple of slightly risque jokes about the groom but which ultimately make him out to be charming and the hero of the story, and certainly nothing too offensive (remember there are Grannies, In-Laws and Children in the room). Definitelydon't make it a story about how Laddish the Stag do was as that'll only be of interest to the 6 or 7 drunk blokes who actually went on said do...

Say something nice about the bride (it's her day afterall) and keep it reasonably short - no one ever said "oh I wish that speech had been 10 mins longer", but lots of people do say "I wish he'd get on with it so we can start the serious drinking"!

My Best Man speech included the fact that the Groom is a keen rugby player, so what I did was email a host of famous rugby players and asked them to say a few words. I got several replies which I read out during the "and here are a few telegrams we have received from people who couldn't be here today" section. For the rest of the evening I had people coming up and saying "That was brilliant, did XXX really write that about the Groom?"...

[curlyks2]

I second what Steve just said

Agree too... had to do one (the best man speech, not the bride) a couple of months back. Had the potential to go spectactularly wrong with a bride from Mexico and a translater doing his business so her parents could understand the speeches.

Some of the attendees at the reception who weren't so close to the families didn't quite get all the content, but since it's really the bride, groom and close family and friends that you most need to write for that was fine.

Biggest tips I was given were:

• Keep it short. If it's longer than two printed sides (14pt) of A4 then it's too long.
• Compliment the bride.
• Gently humiliate the groom.
• Do not talk about his ex's, however funny the stories might be.
• If it's a short notice wedding (as the one I was at was) the possible reasons for this do not belong in the speech.

Ck.
PS Even managed to get away with comparing the groom to a wet dog, much to his Mum's delight.

[Fat Audi 80]

Good replies Dan and CK.

Ahh, brings back fond memories of my wedding day where my Best Men, set up a powerpoint presentation where they had sourced pictures from friends and family and proceeded to very thoroughly extract the urine over every aspect of my recent life, including photo's of ALL my old cars. They even included a fake email from the a car polishing forum stating that "They all hope Anna (my wife) will be helping to polish my hood, I mean bonnet"! etc.....

That said, some really nice stuff was mentioned in between all the jokes and that for me is the key to a good speech.

(The speech culminated in them presenting us with a Sun strip for my car with "Steve & Anna" on it.... )

Cheers,

Steve.