Golden rule of wedding speeches – your speech is for the WHOLE audience, not your mates.
I was BM at my mate’s wedding recently and he (groom) made the (common) schooboy error of trying to make his mates laugh, and it was car-crash, toe-curlingly cringeworthy in parts and almost painful at times.
Having made the same mistake myself a few years back, I found and read this book:
It doesn’t give you a load of cliches and toilet humour that you’ll get in 3/4’s of Best Man’s speeches over the years. Instead it gets you thinking in a much, much better way.
Having used it for inspiration for my own BM speech in the summer, I can vouch whole heartedly for it – it worked an absolute treat. I still get people commenting on how good my speech went down (and I am NOT a good, natural or regular public speaker – quite the opposite).