Five Tips for a Great Best Man Speech
1. Avoid novelty speeches
We’ve all seen clips on You Tube of people giving brilliant ‘novelty’ speeches e.g., as a song, or a stand-up routine, or a TV show parody. One of the best examples I’ve ever seen was a guy giving his speech like he was the commentator on a horse race!
And when it comes off, this can be really entertaining, or funny, or poignant. But when it doesn’t…
Unless you’re a performer or have experience at putting together a show, unless you’re one hundred per cent confident in your ability to pull it off and to pull it off well, think very hard before you go down the road of the novelty speech. If you don’t have the time to write and rehearse a ‘bit’ properly, walk away!
2. Don’t Try
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Say how much you’ve enjoyed spending the day with them, and what a great help they’ve been to the newlyweds.
And most importantly, don’t forget the bride! Sometimes a Best Man speech only focuses on the groom and what a great guy he is, but a wedding is about two people, and the bride deserves a mention too! It’s always good to compliment her on her looks, but more importantly to talk about the positive effect she’s had on the groom, and how being with her has changed him for the better.
Maybe you were at school with the groom, or you’re college buddies, but you haven’t seen him in a while and you don’t know the bride that well. In that case, you should also talk about how much you're looking forward to getting to know her, and that you hope you’ll be sharing lots of happy occasions with them in the future.
And the golden rule—the bride should never hear something about her new husband on her wedding day that she didn’t already know. It may be cool to embarrass him, but the Best Man should never embarrass the bride. If you want to tell a story that’s a bit risky, check with the groom that the bride knows about it, so she doesn’t get an embarrassing surprise in front of all her friends and
Making the father of the bride speech, I feel a bit like a Sheik walking into his harem for the first time. I know what I've got to do, I just don't know where to start. You will all be pleased to learn that my speech will be every bit as good as last time. In fact, my side of the family will probably remember great chunks of it. Not really, although I am following exactly the same format. This means it will probably start off badly, sag in the middle with long silences, and then trail off into a lot of incoherent rambling.
It is customary for the best man to retell an embarrassing tale or two from the bridegroom’s past. As Gary’s oldest friend, this part of the speech fell to me. However, I had two problems with this. Firstly, Gary originally insisted on vetting the speech, which would have meant me going to the trouble of preparing two speeches. Luckily, he relented. Secondly, Gary is the original Mr. Nice Guy and it's very difficult to think of anything bad to say about him. So, back to you Steve!
I read somewhere that you can flesh out your speech by researching which famous people were born the same day as the groom (bridegroom), and make some sort of link. Well, Brian was born on 9th January 1976, just 24 hours after a whole host of famous and interesting people - musical luminaries such as Bowie and Elvis, and the modern day Einstei...
Eidenmuller, Michael E. Great Speeches for Better Speaking: Listen and Learn From America’s Most Memorable Speeches. New York: Mcgraw Hill, 2008. Google Books. Web. 4 September 2010.
As Father of the Bride, I am honored to be the first to speak this evening. I would like to begin by welcoming each and every one of you on this joyous occasion. It is good to see so many friends and family here today to help celebrate Paula and Manson’s wedding. I would also like to remember those who have meant so much to our family, but could not be here today.
Best man 1: Good evening everyone. I must warn you we are both pretty nervous about doing this speech. We have spent many a night awake, trying plan it to no avail. We were both so nervous about doing this speech we asked the groom for some advice on how to prepare for talking to a large audience.
So now I come to my final wedding day duty which isn’t a duty really – it’s a real pleasure: on behalf of the bridesmaids and myself I sincerely wish you, Daniel, and your lovely wife, Kim, everlasting love and happiness!
Firstly, on behalf of the bridesmaids, I'd like to thank the groom for his kind words, and I have to say they have done an excellent job today and look absolutely wonderful.
They say that before marriage a man will lay awake thinking about something you said, after marriage he’ll fall asleep before you have finished saying it.
...eatest wish for the two of you is that through the years, your love for each other will deepen and grow. Years from now, may you look back on this day, your wedding day, as the day you loved each other the least. I wish you the very best. My love to the both of you.
I have also learned about different types of audiences and speeches including persuasive, informative, entertaining and delivering special occasion speeches. It came to my attention that whenever I was making these presentations or speeches, I needed to do so with confidence, consistence and practice before the actual presentation and completely eliminate the element of panic. It was also clear that capturing the attention of the audience and engaging them in the whole process, it was necessary to have a very strong introduction and also try and use visuals to deliver the message. It was therefore vital to respect each person’s diversity and cultural values (Lucas, 2011).
But what they do not know is that because they are worrying too much, they already have missed the real essence of the wedding. Planning your own wedding is a stressful task but do let yourself sweat off over small stuff. Who cares about flowers that are one shade off or your brother is wearing a tie that does not matches the wedding theme. You are marrying the love of your life and you are starting a life together, that’s all that matters.
In public speaking I learned many types of concepts, theories and terms of communication. In concepts of publicly speaking there’s, relaxation, practice, credibility, attention getters, attire, organization, volume, emotion, audience relation, and movement. In my first speech, “The any old bag speech” I quickly learned the do’s, don’ts and concepts of my speech performance.
You can talk about how grateful you are that you have gotten to meet this person or how grateful you are for how the day is playing out. And the chances are good that they will share a few things they are grateful for, or at least start talking about positive things since that is the tone that has been set. That conversation will definitely stand out for them.
I can not forget! The guests are a very important part of your wedding, which will accompany you on your yes I want, think of them, give them thanks for attending the big day. And there is no better time to do it right after the wedding celebration, there are many ways and very original: you command them a thank you message with a photo of you, take advantage of your first wedding video and Included one thanks to the end, make a brunch with the closest guests ... And enjoy the most of every moment!