My successful formula:
- Around one minute (maximum) of high quality joke cracking (wins over the audience, gets attention, and gives you credibility as a temporary entertainer)
- 30 seconds or another minute of saying nice, sweet things (please the bride and her friends along with the parents/relatives of the bride and groom, ensures that the groom made the right choice for best man, wins over the women in the audience who didn't care for your jokes)
- If you have a great story, you can insert it anywhere, just keep that short and sweet as well
- Make pleasant, classy, and thoughtful toast
I highly recommend not going any longer than 2-3 minutes, as NOBODY at the wedding really wants to listen to you talk in the first place. People really appreciate the short and sweet approach as most of them are just waiting for you to finish so they can get booze, take a piss, or go talk to people they actually care about and don't get to see all that often.
Tips:
- Try to include at least one joke that a good amount of people at the reception will be in on (something related to how the bride and groom met, one of their pets, anything they have done together that a lot of people at the wedding would know about, etc.).
- I got a round of applause during the middle of my speech for making a "callback" to something the priest said during the sermon at the wedding ceremony about everyone one at the wedding is now part of the bride and groom's new family, bla bla bla.... So pay a little bit of attention to anything said during the wedding/rehearsal dinner that a lot of the crowd will remember and use is to your advantage.
- Prepare a couple of index cards with notes. You may not need them, but nobody will call you out if you need to pull them out at any point during the toast.
- If you have the leave the table to go up to a microphone or anything like that, be sure not to forget your drink. Sometimes the speeches will come right at the beginning of the reception, so be prepared and try to get an estimate of when you'll be going on. You should ask the DJ/MC or someone like that as they are the only ones who actually know the schedule.
- Again, I personally advise against gunning for 5-6 minutes and would recommend cutting that in half.
This formula helped me deliver a successful best man speech. I received a lot of props for quality as well as a lot of gratitude for keeping it short (from both the guests and bride and groom).
- Around one minute (maximum) of high quality joke cracking (wins over the audience, gets attention, and gives you credibility as a temporary entertainer)
- 30 seconds or another minute of saying nice, sweet things (please the bride and her friends along with the parents/relatives of the bride and groom, ensures that the groom made the right choice for best man, wins over the women in the audience who didn't care for your jokes)
- If you have a great story, you can insert it anywhere, just keep that short and sweet as well
- Make pleasant, classy, and thoughtful toast
I highly recommend not going any longer than 2-3 minutes, as NOBODY at the wedding really wants to listen to you talk in the first place. People really appreciate the short and sweet approach as most of them are just waiting for you to finish so they can get booze, take a piss, or go talk to people they actually care about and don't get to see all that often.
Tips:
- Try to include at least one joke that a good amount of people at the reception will be in on (something related to how the bride and groom met, one of their pets, anything they have done together that a lot of people at the wedding would know about, etc.).
- I got a round of applause during the middle of my speech for making a "callback" to something the priest said during the sermon at the wedding ceremony about everyone one at the wedding is now part of the bride and groom's new family, bla bla bla.... So pay a little bit of attention to anything said during the wedding/rehearsal dinner that a lot of the crowd will remember and use is to your advantage.
- Prepare a couple of index cards with notes. You may not need them, but nobody will call you out if you need to pull them out at any point during the toast.
- If you have the leave the table to go up to a microphone or anything like that, be sure not to forget your drink. Sometimes the speeches will come right at the beginning of the reception, so be prepared and try to get an estimate of when you'll be going on. You should ask the DJ/MC or someone like that as they are the only ones who actually know the schedule.
- Again, I personally advise against gunning for 5-6 minutes and would recommend cutting that in half.
This formula helped me deliver a successful best man speech. I received a lot of props for quality as well as a lot of gratitude for keeping it short (from both the guests and bride and groom).