Better Wedding Speech

How to write a great best man speech

It’s a big moment — you’ve been asked to be the best man.

In some way, the success of your friend’s wedding is on your shoulders. You might end up responsible for all sorts of the inner machinery of the wedding — from organising a stag to forget, to maintaining the atmosphere on the day and running point on anything that comes up. And, sure, there’s the small matter of spending 10 minutes talking in front of everyone.

The good thing is that your responsibility is also your opportunity to stand tall. By the time you get to the speech, you may well feel more confident than you ever have.

The key is turning that confidence in a great best man speech.

How to deliver a knockout wedding speech

If only writing a thumper of a wedding speech was the end of it.

No, if anything getting it all down together is the easy bit. Even when it feels like it might never come together (but, hey, there’s help for that).

Delivering a great wedding speech can be daunting, but equally it could end up among the best moments of your life. Here’s my top eight tips for making your wedding speech as memorable as possible.

How long should a best man speech be?

The length of a wedding speech is as important, if not more, than the content itself.

Get it right and you’ll leave the guests in the sweet spot of having chemistry with you and wanting more. Get it wrong and you’ll find the glasses empty well before you’re anywhere near your toast.

The trick is in the delivery, but there’s a couple of neat rules to keep in mind when you’re trying to hit the perfect length for a wedding speech.

Welcome to Better Wedding Speech

There was this moment during a wedding speech I gave for my sister, on a golden May afternoon in 2016. I sipped a drink and scanned the room, taking a pause after what I thought was a reasonably good joke about the time my sister thought Wales was an island because it can accessed via a bridge.

I knew many of the guests, but not all, and I was drawn to looking for affirmation in those I knew. On a couple of tables I saw pockets of laughter, smiles above rows of waistcoats and dresses, and something that looked like encouragement. During that moment I thought to myself, ‘this is going much better than expected‘.

And I remember that clearly, because I don’t remember much else about that day.