So my best mate is getting married and he's asked my brother and I to be the best men. We've got "show up here, make that happen, make sure she doesn't drink too much, keep an eye on him" bit nailed it's just the speech we're working on.

I've been to the odd wedding but and have seen a standard speech and i've seen one that bombed… I don't want to be the one that bombs!

I was a teacher for a while so standing up and speaking isn't my concern… it's the content and structure… what should I go for… what worked for you… what should I avoid… should i use the fact that there's two of us to our advantage?

Any advice is good advice since i'm working in the dark a bit here!

Cheers

I've got to do one in September, I'm absolutely s**ting myself tbh. I've got one great story with video evidence that unfortunately I can't use as he'd murder me, and that's about it. But, I do have my start line, and it's "I come not to praise Graham, but to bury him".

Make it short!

A good start is always to say that the best mans speech is an important part of the day and so you sought some advice. That advice was to make sure it was to last no longer than the groom can make love.
Thanks very much good night *sit down*

Always goes down well.

Don;t rant on, a couple of well linked stories about his past, reaosnably clean, a nid to his missues, a brief grrrr yummo for the bridesmaids and a toast. Then you are done.

Lovely.

Have a look on YouTube theres some beauties on there.

Be honest, be sincere, think what it really is about them that you like. Don't bother with the trite tales and tired jokes – this is their day and think what you can do to make it a bit more special. Use good jokes! I said that I was flattered to be part of their day and that they trusted me to do that best man stuff. Some say the best man derives from ancient customs of marriage by kidnapping, or from defending the bride from would-be kidnappers. If you can't get some mileage from that then you need slapping!

Best advice I can give is to bin the usual jokes – they will bomb. Make it personal about the bride/groom and/or people at the wedding.

There must be some personal anecdotes you can use.
When I wrote my wedding speech I used some no-very funny anecdotes as a starting point and added a few minor embelishments to make them funnier. Artistic license if you like.

Are there any stand-out characters who will be at the wedding who you can subject to some light ribbing? (provided you think they have the constitution for it of course)

My advice is to be sincere and be yourself, don't try and be funny when it's not you. Be mindful that it is a wide audience and you don't want to offend gran! My best man did a cracking job and he asked me to be his (I think the beach towels on the Bride and Groom's chairs went down OK, Sven is German)…..
I put things in about our friendship, especially as I hadn't known him more than 10 years when they married, and our experiences together. Went well.

Don't make it too long, perhaps 5 minutes tops.

Keep the stories relatively clean, they'll still embarrass the hell out of him, but if you divulge too much information you'll be alienating about 90% of your audience who certainly don't know him as well as you, or in the way you do… Good ways to end such stories are "I'll leave the rest up to your imagination" or "I'm sure you can imagine what happened next"…

Don't bang on about the same thing. Embarrass him sure, but you're supposed to be the best man, you're supposed to know all his most embarrassing stories and his character faults… A little about each, rather than going into too much detail about any particular story is probably the best approach.

DO NOT divulge any stories about ex GF's or past conquests… Not unless you want to cease to be the best man immediately. You might be able to take the piss out of him in private about these kind of things quite happily, but in front of 100 guests, including his new wife and her parents, you'd be making yourself the least popular person in the room in seconds!

Say something like "at this point, I am a bit worried that the groom has perhaps already been the subject of too much attention today, after all he manages to do a good enough job of embarrassing himself all the time anyway, perhaps we should be nice to him on his Wedding day? But then of course I realised that this was too good an opportunity to waste, so here goes…"

Oh, and DO NOT copy and paste stuff off the internet! I've seen a couple of speeches in the past that were pretty much a Googled speech with X and Y replaced with the Bride and Grooms name… They were atrocious! If you don't know the groom well enough to write 5 minutes of embarrassing content about him (I could have gone on for hours about my best mate, struggled to keep it back to 5 minutes or so!) then I suggest you should not be the best man… Some cliches are fine, but you must tell original stories otherwise people will wonder whether you actually know each other or not!

Good luck

"I've been told that the speech should be approximately the same length as a young ladies skirt: long enough to cover the important bits but then the shorter the better"

Start and end with something that you think will make them laugh then your on to a winner.

I opened up with I'm X the best man some of you will know me some of you may not but one of my tasks as best man is to make sure that we do not have any ex's etc turn up and ruin this day luckily enough however the recent bout of swine flu* has made my life a whole lot easier…

May be a little close to the mark for some weddings but worked for me. Luckily or unluckily (is that a word?) the Brides father was a cartoonist and part time comedian so had a fair bit to live up to but he had warmed them up a little.

*I used foot and mouth for my speech.

Only you will know your audience so difficult to judge. The 2 I've done were very different to each other- one very slapstick with lots of props and the other a bit more serious. If you can, get the whole thing memorised so you can talk more naturally.

All I would say is stay off the sauce until after that part of the day. I found both my best man days quite stressful to be honest making sure the small stuff happened.

The best advice I got when I was a best man was from my father. He told me to make it whimsical, pitch it so that you're telling stories about the groom's idiocies and indiscretions he wouldn't tell about himself, but that people will laugh with him about, not at him. And above all else everyone should have forgotten it the next day* (other than it was generally wonderful and completely in keeping with the day) – trust me you do not want to be the thing that gets talked about weeks later, it's their day.

*Don't offend the bride or the parents – that's a sure way to be remembered forever.

Nailed it! Thanks for all your help.

did it on Jan 2nd for my best mate – 4th time i've done it now , guess I'm the safe option! i really enjoyed it this time around, ther's tons of sites where you can nick bits of speeches from.. main thing is to enjoy yourself