First and foremost, Ollie–the best man, presents himself very well speaking clearly and projecting nicely so that everyone can hear him.  Though most people may not consider this, Ollie finds himself in a somewhat awkward poistion as he has to do his best man speech on the stairs.

Ollie is clearly fairly comforable speaking and he does many good things in this best man speech: He immediately toasts the bride and groom quickly bringing everybody into his speech.  He mentions his knowledge of the couple and their long history together.  He integrates humor and history nicely in this speech.

We have written much about blending sincerity and humor in a best man speech.  Ollie does this nicely, integrating humor in with his sincere knowledge of the bride and groom.

Enjoy Ollie’s Best Man Speech below as an example of good best man speech.

A Basic, Well-Presented Best Man Speech

Many best men feel saddled with this great expectation:  Your Best Man Speech Better Be Funny.

Thus, the best man often sets out to write a 5 minute comedy sketch for his best man speech.  And do you know what happens?

He fails…and fails big time.  Why?  The best man is not a comedian.  Think of the life of a comedian.  They spend their time trolling the comedy bars hoping that one night they will be spotted by someone big in the business and get their one chance on David Letterman or Jay Leno.  There, they will have 5 minutes to give their best performance, the performance of a lifetime.  And a lot of them fail!

They have prepared their whole lives for these five minutes and cannot get the laughs they need.  Are you, the best man, going to bet the farm on being funny for 5 continual minutes?

No.

A great best man speech combines sincerity and humor in equal doses.

There are many easy techniques to include sincerity into your best man speech.  Think of you and groom.  Why were you asked to be the best man?  Presumably, you and the best man have a long history together.  Think of how you met, talk about your relationship, talk about the person that he is, mention how proud you were to be asked to be his best man.  As you think about this, you will no doubt recall some funny stories that occurred in your past with the groom, or you and the groom together.

Then, consider when he met the bride.  Did he change?  Did he mention her too you?  Did he try to play it cool at first before he told you that he really loved her?  If possible, integrate a story or two about the bride and groom together.

Sincerity is also achieved with genuine praise and thanks.  Give a shout-out to all of those who made this day so great:  the moms, dads, siblings, and even the wedding staff serving all of the people at the party.  Generate a round of applause for all of these people and the audience, who have contributed to this great day.

When you follow this sincere path, you will find great source material for humorous stories.  Integrate this humor into your true tales and you will deliver an unforgettable best man speech!

This speech is very odd in that he, Dave–the Best Man, seems to have cue cards accessible.  What could have been written on them?

Did the cue cards simply say “Ummmmm….”?

This Best Man Speech only lasts 1:21 seconds and it is excruciating from start to finish.  At a distance, and since we were not there, we can find a bit of humor in this crash and burn scenario.  I truly hope that the moment has gone forgotten amongst these people, but unfortunately, it’s on YouTube and will live in video infamy.

Please, best men, avoid this fate by using the resources on these pages available to you!  Here is the video…

The Worst Best Man Speech

The best man speech has become the focal point of many weddings.  The best man either delivered a knock out best man speech and all of the guests are talking about it.  Or, he delivered a poor or inappropriate speech that has everyone talking for the wrong reasons.

So, will you be the best man who delivers a knockout performance or will you be the one who accidentally rains on the wedding parade?

The problem with the whole notion of the Best Man Speech is that, in the majority of the cases, the best man has never spoken in public before.  He does not have the experience.  Thus, his first time as a public speaker comes on a grand stage and, even with lots of preparation, the only true test is the real one…when the best man finds himself in front of dozens or even hundreds of spectators.

Here are five tips to help you deliver a knockout Best Man Speech.

Five Tips for Your Best Man Speech

1. BE YOURSELF, BE GENUINE:  This is the #1 tip because it is absolutely the most important ingredient in your speech.  Best Man speech that fail often do so because the best man is trying to be someone their not.  You cannot imitate a great speaker.  Great public speakers learn basic skills and then they adapt their own personality.  Be yourself, be genuine and all will go fine.
2. KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY.  THEN, SAY IT, DON’T READ IT:  Sometimes we see the best man at a wedding simply reading his whole speech from typed-out notes.  Notes are fine.  Cue-cards are great–you don’t want to get up there and draw a blank when you look at all the faces.  However, you cannot deliver a knock-out speech reading verbatim from your Word Document and not making lots of eye contact with the audience.
3. BE UNIQUE:  I recently attended a wedding in which the Best Man recited verbatim a speech he found on the Internet.  Aside from changing the name of the bride and groom, the speech was word-for-word the same.  Your best friend asked you to the be the Best Man because you are best friends.  Find some fun in your shared stories and integrate those into your speech.
4. MASTER THE STUFF AND THE WORDS WILL FREELY FLOW:  What is the stuff?  The stuff is your knowledge of the bride and groom, the stuff is what you want to say, the stuff is the audience, the stuff is where intellect meets personality.  Preparation is key to mastering the stuff.  If you have a good outline, some good stories, and love for the bride and groom, you will not get lost in speaking technique (you will be your genuine self) and the words will freely flow.
5. BE HUMBLE:  In many great best man speeches, the best man acknowledges his nervousness.    This is a great step as it brings the audience on board with you and they want to see you succeed.

ONE BONUS “DON’T” TIP:  Best Man speeches often go terribly wrong when the best man gets a few laughs, gets encouraged in this way, and then strays from his outline.  Suddenly, he finds himself in no-man’s land not knowing where to go, mumbling on, and often saying something inappropriate.

Use these tips and the other resources on these pages and you will certainly deliver a Knock-Out Best Man speech!

When you deliver a best man speech, the audience expects many warm words towards the bride and groom but they also expect humor, they expect to laugh, they expect you to be funny.

So how do you accomplish this?  How can you be funny in your best man speech?  Are there any good best man wedding jokes?

To be funny in a best man speech is a challenge!  Why?  The Audience!

Many guys are funny around their guy friends.  However, this humor often does not work and may not be appropriate for a wedding.  Consider the attendees:  the mother and father of the bride and groom, grandparents, young children, friends of parents.  Basically, the audience comes in all forms, from young to old, puritanical to edgy.

How can you create laughter with such parameters imposed?  You can’t be too dirty (like you may be with your guy friends) but you don’t want to be all fluffy, emotional, and soft that people will not find any enjoyment in your best man speech.

What is the solution to this?

I like to think of Disney movies when I think of a solution to this problem.  Disney movies are for kids…right?  But who takes these kids to all of the movies?  Their parents!  Children’s movies are most popular when the parents enjoy them too.  Word of mouth travels among parents and they suggest to each other what children’s movies they might also enjoy.

Disney movies are stuffed with innuendo and nuance that borders on edgy.  The beauty with innuendo and nuance in a best man speech is that the innocents in the wedding crowd–maybe grandma or younger sisters–simply do not get it while the others find the humor in it.

So how do you incorporate humor in your speech?  In the article entitled, Using Humor in Your Speech, the author mentions to draw on your personal experiences.  You know you have some funny stories with the groom and possible with the bride and groom together.  These stories may or may not be appropriate for the wedding party.  However, phrased properly, these stories can be told in a nuanced way so that people in the know get it while the others enjoy the face value of the story.

Where to go from here?

Read  Daniel Stevens great book entitled Best Man Speeches - Be Fearless, Funny, and Flawless! to get further ideas on how to incorporate humor into your Best Man Speech.  This book is full of best man speech insight and even provides audio examples so that you not only find the words for your speech, but the learn the nuance as well.

The best man, with a Southern accent and demeanor to the core, begins his best man speech by saying, “Tradition would dictate that this would be opportunity to bring out embarassing stories about the groom, but I am not going to do that.  For example, I will not tell the story about…”

This can be a great opener for a Best Man Speech and provides a terrific segue to tell funny stories about the groom.  Also, notice how he easily segues into the “answering machine” story, providing a funky, funny setting to his best man speech.

Often, a best man speech goes wrong when it becomes too much about the storyteller, when it becomes to contrived.  How can you be theatrical and fun while making the story about the bride and the groom.  The answer:  Be Genuine.

In the video below, we see that the best man is a character, but we also see how much he cares for the bride and groom.  Enjoy!

Southern Best Man Speech

In the speech below, the best man at this Scottish wedding uses humor perfectly, though his content is rather edgy.  You must know your audience in a best man speech and he clearly did–many Scottish people who were enjoying themselves and up for a good, if irreverent, laugh.

This is a great example of a best man speech and should be used as a barometer for how to create a funny best man speech.  However, tread carefully if you want to use similar content–it may not go over with all audiences.

In this best man speech, his boderline humor consists of a joke with the bride asking the groom if he would “like to try her black bush”.  This is a reference to a form of whiskey and had everyone in stitches.  Then, he made a reference to “bang her” which was equally hilarious.

The Scottish accent may be difficult to understand at first but be sure to keep watching.  This is a hilarious best man speech and may having you falling on the floor laughing with the others.

Hilarious Best Man Speech

Hilarious Best Man’s Speech - Celebrity bloopers here

When someone is asked to be the best man in a wedding, the initial feelings of your friend getting married and you being such a big part of it are often quickly thawed by one sobering thought:  I have to give the best man speech.

To many people unaccustomed to giving a speech, much less a best man speech, the idea of speaking in front of many people brings great fear and trepidation.  I am reminded of the Seinfeld joke in which he quipped:

According to most studies, people’s number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you’re better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

Fear of public speaking can add great stress to your wedding weekend.

My friend Danny once was called upon to be the best man at his friend Todd’s wedding.  This was going to be a large occasion as Todd and his bride to be were rather high-society and planning a huge wedding with a who-who’s list of attendees.

Danny confided in me that he had never once spoken in front of a group of people before much less a group that numbered over 500 people in his hometown.  This surprised as Danny is a very gregarious individual who people love to be around.  I had assumed he had done many speeches before especially at his workplace.  But this was not the case.

“In fact,” Danny mentioned, “the only time that I have given any sort of public speech was in a college class.”  He went on to say that he sweated and stammered through the speech and that he refers to this day back in college as the worst day of my life.

As the wedding weekend neared, this was becoming a very large issue.  With Danny’s anxiety at such a peak, he was neglecting his other best man duties like planning the bachelor party.  Danny was so racked with fear and trepidation that he even considered calling Todd and telling him that he could not be the best man.  The very sad part about best man speech anxiety, as was the case with Danny, is that the best man does not naturally enjoy the wedding process because of his best man speech fears.

I told Danny about some websites that might help, including a page full of video examples entitled How-To Become a Great Public Speaker.  These videos began to help Danny through the process.

But then Danny himself found this site called Best Man Speeches - Be Fearless, Funny, and Flawless! I noticed his demeanor change.  He stopped talking to me about all of his anxieties and started actually participating in the wedding process.  His fear seemed to be all but gone.  He said this resource gave him all the techniques to quell his nerves, come up with great anecdotes, and give a great best man speech.

On the wedding day I was in attendance.  Danny gave a moving and funny speech that resulted in a huge waves of applause from the audience.  He was funny, relaxed, and seemed so at ease on the stage in front of hundreds of these important people.

Later that night, I saw this beautiful girl talking to Danny and as she leaned her body against his she said:  “Danny, that speech was absolutely amazing.  How did you do that?”

“Aw,” he said, “it was nothing.”

A word of caution about your best man speech:  Imitate But Do Not Duplicate.

Upon seeing the video below, I recall a wedding I attended this summer.  The Best Man at this wedding did the EXACT SAME SPEECH as you see below.  Of course, he changed the names and locations but he scarcely changed a word.

Did people like his best man speech?  Of course they did.  However, as more and more people visit the Internet, the risk that somebody notices that you plagiarized your best man speech increases exponentially.

Imagine, you give the exact same speech that someone has heard before.  Instead of people laughing with you, they’ll be laughing at you.

So, use these Funny Best Man Speech Videos as guidelines, but do not imitate them verbatim.  Enjoy the video the below…it is funny!

Funny Best Man Speech

In fact, there is a good chance that you are reading this right now on a Wednesday, Thursday, or even Friday and you have to give your Best Man Speech on Saturday.

You have something available to you that I did not know about to ease your fears:  Best Man Speeches - Be Fearless, Funny, and Flawless!

It is easily the best $20 that you will spend in your life!

I know how it feels.  As I said, I have been in your shoes.  I knew I had to deliver a knock-out speech but I did not know where to begin.  I had several stories that I could tell but I had several questions:  How to begin?  How to make them humorous?  How to make them appeal to everyone?  How to make them non-offensive?

And the best part about Best Man Speeches - Be Fearless, Funny, and Flawless!?  If you do not have ideas for your speech, this book provides 20 speeches that you can use or modify to fit your situation.

With this book, you not only receive 20 speeches to use, you also receive the Unstoppable Confidence Audio Program.  This is extremely important.  When you get up there in front of all those people, your demeanor is as important (if not more so) than the words you choose.  Your Best Man Speech must be delivered with confidence!

You’ll also receive 3 bonus books:  Jokes, Quotes And One Liners, Bachelor Party Ideas, and Classic & Contemporary Sample Toasts.

All of this is available for immediate download or you can elect to receive hard-copies of the material.

You are spending hundreds of dollars on tux rentals and parties.  Don’t screw up the hardest part:  The Best Man Speech.

Order Best Man Speeches - Be Fearless, Funny, and Flawless!.  I assure you that it will be the best $20 you have ever spent in your life.