The Best Man Has a Microphone. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Best Man's Speech Do's and Don'ts (From a DJ Who Has Heard It All)
Give the groom’s best friend a microphone and you never quite know what will happen next. After 28 years of weddings, I’ve heard Best Man speeches that brought entire rooms to tears, speeches that nearly brought marriages to an end, and plenty that landed somewhere wonderfully in between. The best ones embarrass the groom, make everyone laugh, celebrate the couple, and reveal exactly why this particular friendship matters. So what separates a memorable Best Man speech from one everyone desperately wishes they could forget?
September 17, 2026
Back in May, I heard a Best Man speech that I still remember almost word for word.
The Best Man was the groom's younger brother. He was in medical school and, in an effort to save money, was living in the basement of the home his brother shared with his fiancée. His bedroom was directly beneath theirs. More specifically, his bed was directly beneath a vent leading to the bedroom upstairs.
And at night, he told us, he could hear everything.
There are moments when 150 people can collectively have exactly the same thought.
This was one of them.
He would lie in bed at night trying desperately to fall asleep, he explained, while through the vent above his head he could hear it. Loudly. Constantly. Enthusiastically.
Laughter.
These two would lie in bed and laugh. And laugh. And laugh some more. It never seemed to stop. Night after night, downstairs in the basement, their future doctor was apparently attempting to sleep while the happy couple upstairs found one another absolutely hysterical.
“I don't even know if these two have sex,” he said. “Maybe my brother's skillset in making love is what's so funny. I can't say.”
The room exploded.
But then he made the turn.
What he heard through that vent, night after night, was two people who genuinely enjoyed being together. They didn't merely love one another. They liked one another. They made each other laugh when nobody else was around, when there was no audience, no photographer, no wedding reception and no reason to perform for anybody. They would simply lie in bed together and laugh.
And couples who laugh together, he told us, stay together.
It was funny. It was inappropriate. It embarrassed the groom. It teased the couple. It flirted rather aggressively with a line that everyone in the room thought it was about to cross—and then it turned around and became something unexpectedly sweet. The joke didn't diminish the groom. It made him more human. The story didn't make the marriage the punchline. It told us something wonderful about it. And by the time his younger brother finished, we knew something about this couple that we hadn't known before he stood up.
That is a great Best Man speech.
And perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates just how much power we hand someone when we give him that microphone. The Best Man often knows the stories nobody else knows. He knows what happens when the couple thinks nobody is listening. He knows the groom before the suit, before the vows, and often long before the bride ever entered the picture. What he chooses to do with that knowledge can produce one of the funniest, warmest and most memorable moments of the reception.
Or it can make everybody wish there weren't vents.
There are few honors in life quite like being asked to serve as someone's Best Man. Your brother, cousin, childhood friend, college roommate, or the guy who once helped you move a sectional sofa down three flights of stairs has looked at every man he knows and decided that you are the one he trusts most to stand beside him on one of the biggest days of his life. That means something. It means he values your friendship. He trusts your judgment. He believes you will support him, keep him calm, make sure he has the rings, straighten his tie, tell him when there is spinach in his teeth, and generally help shepherd him safely from bachelorhood into married life.
Then somebody hands you a microphone.
And suddenly, apparently, none of that matters.
I have DJed weddings for 28 years, and I have heard hundreds upon hundreds of Best Man speeches. Some have been hilarious. Some have been touching. Some have managed to be both. A great Best Man speech can be one of the highlights of a reception because nobody else in the room has quite the same perspective. Parents knew the groom as a child. The bride knows him as a partner. His Best Man, however, may possess the complete historical archive—including several chapters the groom would very much prefer remain classified.
That is both the Best Man's greatest asset and his greatest danger.
Because being entrusted with embarrassing information does not automatically grant permission to disclose it.
The Best Man speech is not a roast. It is not testimony before a congressional committee. It is not your opportunity to finally tell the groom's grandmother what happened during Spring Break in 2022. It is certainly not the appropriate venue to reveal why the groom is no longer welcome at a particular Applebee's. There may be six people at Table 8 who desperately want you to tell that story. Those six people already know the story. Everyone else—including Grandma—was perfectly happy before you arrived.
This is where Best Man speeches occasionally go spectacularly off the rails. The Best Man knows things. So many things. He knows about old girlfriends. He knows about drunken nights. He knows about terrible decisions. He knows nicknames that have not been spoken publicly since middle school. He knows exactly why the groom had to replace the passenger-side mirror on his 2012 Honda Civic. And for perhaps the first time in their friendship, he has been given amplification.
Power corrupts.
Wireless microphones corrupt absolutely.
The trick is understanding that you were not given the microphone because you know the most damaging stories. You were given it because the groom trusts you to know which stories not to tell.
"I could explain why we call him ‘Tuesday,’ but his mother is sitting right there...”
DON'T #1: Play to Your Buddies Instead of the Room
Every Best Man has an audience within the audience. They're usually sitting together, and they know things the rest of us don't: the nicknames, the trips, the disasters, the bars, the golf outings, the near-arrests that fortunately remained near-arrests, and why mentioning a pineapple can incapacitate six grown men. This is dangerous because those six men are going to laugh at almost anything the Best Man says. They have context. They have history. They may also have bourbon.
I've watched the transformation happen. The Best Man tells a story. Table 8 erupts. Encouraged, he tells another one specifically for them. Bigger laugh. Now he remembers something else. The groomsmen are pounding the table, and suddenly he is Chris Rock with a boutonniere. Unfortunately, while Table 8 is having the greatest night of its life, the bride has stopped smiling, the groom is staring contemplatively into his champagne, Mom is deciding whether murder would violate the venue contract, and 120 other people are wondering what the hell happened with the pineapple.
Inside jokes aren't inherently bad. Quite the opposite. They can reveal the intimacy and longevity of a friendship better than almost anything else. But the room should not need a secret decoder ring to understand your speech. Sometimes a little context makes the story accessible to everyone. Sometimes providing that context would require revealing information that has absolutely no business leaving Table 8. And sometimes the explanation takes four minutes, requires a diagram, introduces three additional characters and still isn't remotely funny to anyone who wasn't there.
In that case, don't explain the joke.
Pick another damn story.
“Steve asked me to do a few lines, but I forgot my mirror at home.”
DO #1: Remember Grandma Is Listening
I actually heard that opening.
The room erupted.
It remains one of the funniest Best Man openings I've heard in 28 years. Yes, it's a cocaine joke. At a wedding. Parents present. Grandparents present. Probably children somewhere in the building. And it worked.
So when I say remember Grandma is listening, I am not saying Grandma requires a sanitized speech. There are a lot of very cool grandmas. She may laugh harder than anybody at the dirty joke. She has, after all, been alive considerably longer than you have, and it is probably safe to assume you are not introducing her to profanity, alcohol or the concept of sex.
But look around the room. Are there children sitting ten feet away? Use common sense. Is this an adults-only reception where the bride, groom and both families have been dropping F-bombs since cocktail hour? That's a different room. Is Grandma going to laugh at the joke you're contemplating? You probably know better than I do. There is no predetermined rating for a Best Man speech. It does not have to be PG. It doesn't even have to be PG-13. I've heard R-rated Best Man speeches absolutely destroy a room—in the good way. I've also heard considerably cleaner material produce the kind of silence normally reserved for memorial services and standardized testing.
Read the room.
Grandma also represents something more important than language: she wasn't there. Neither were the bride's coworkers, Uncle Frank, the groom's boss or most of the people listening. Sometimes the missing context is harmless, and a few sentences allow everybody to enjoy the story. Other times, explaining the joke merely takes information that six people knew and efficiently distributes it to 150 people who were perfectly happy not knowing.
That's not necessarily storytelling.
Sometimes it's broadcasting.
Remember that Table 8 isn't the only table listening.
Grandma is, too.
“I'm not going to mention any of Brian's ex-girlfriends by name. Mostly because I don't have that kind of time.”
DON'T #2: Talk about the Ex
Funny line.
Don't use it.
This is one place where I'm unequivocal. Leave the exes alone. I don't care whether everybody knows the history. I don't care whether the groom thinks the story is hysterical. I don't care whether the bride knows everything already. I've attended weddings where the grooms' exes were invited. I've DJed a wedding where the groom's ex was literally the Maid of Honor. Do this long enough and eventually every rule about what a wedding is “supposed” to look like meets a wedding that ignores it completely.
Still don't do it.
I've heard versions of the speech where an old girlfriend gets mentioned, somebody laughs, the Best Man adds context, Table 8 laughs harder, and then he remembers Cancun. This is how excavation works. A few sentences later, the groom isn't merely embarrassed anymore. His new wife has learned something.
Former sexual partners are not wedding entertainment.
I shouldn't have to write that sentence.
I do.
And Grandma certainly doesn't need her introduction to this particular chapter of the groom's life delivered through a BOSE speaker at approximately 85 decibels while she eats chicken marsala.
There is another popular variation: “I'd like to assure everyone that we probably won't have any trouble tonight with John's ex-girlfriends showing up. I think they're all out celebrating.”
Again: funny.
Still no.
The problem isn't whether you can construct a good joke about an ex. Of course you can. The problem is that there is virtually no upside. Best case, everybody laughs and nothing happens. Worst case, you've introduced an unnecessary thought into the bride's head, annoyed a family member, embarrassed the groom in a way he didn't enjoy, or opened a door that somebody now has to close.
There are hundreds of ways to embarrass your best friend without inviting his romantic history to the reception.
Use one of them.
“There are probably a hundred stories I could tell about Danny tonight. 75 of them would require him to sleep on my couch afterward.”
DO #2: Make Him Squirm—NOT Explain Himself Later
There is a wonderful kind of Best Man story that causes the groom to lower his head, cover his face with both hands and slowly shake it while the entire room laughs. I encourage this.
There is another kind that causes the bride to turn toward him and quietly ask a question.
Avoid that one.
The distinction is beautifully simple. You want the groom thinking:
Oh God. He's telling this story.
You do not want the bride thinking:
Wait. WHAT?
The Best Man is allowed an enormous amount of latitude because of the relationship he has with the groom. Use it. Embarrass him. Make him wonder why he ever trusted you. Make him look across the room with an expression promising retaliation at some future barbecue. But when you hand the microphone back to me, he should not have to begin a second, considerably less entertaining presentation for his wife explaining what you meant.
This applies to more than women. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's something he told his parents happened one way when everybody at Table 8 knows it happened another. Maybe it's the real reason he missed Thanksgiving. Maybe it's a purchase his wife believes cost considerably less than it did. If the punchline requires the groom to spend cocktail hour tomorrow establishing a timeline and answering follow-up questions, perhaps tonight is not the evening to premiere it.
You are his Best Man.
Don't get him in trouble on his wedding day.
“For as long as I've known Jason, he's made decisions with a level of confidence wildly disproportionate to the amount of thought behind them.”
DON'T #3: Humiliate Your Best Friend
Embarrassment and humiliation are not synonyms.
A Best Man should understand the difference better than almost anyone because friendship provides access not only to the funny stories, but also to the vulnerabilities. You know what genuinely bothers him. You know the failures he still regrets. You know the insecurity he jokes about because he'd rather joke about it than admit it hurts. You may know about family problems, financial problems, broken relationships, stupid mistakes with consequences that lasted considerably longer than the hangover.
Knowing those things is evidence of trust.
It is not a license.
I've watched Best Men keep pushing because the groomsmen keep laughing. The first joke lands. The second lands harder. Now the Best Man feels invincible, and somewhere around joke number four, the roast stops being affectionate and becomes something else. The groom is still smiling because 150 people are looking at him and what the hell else is he supposed to do?
Don't mistake the smile for permission.
And don't mistake intimacy for immunity. “He knows I'm kidding” is not a magic spell. Your friendship doesn't suddenly make cruelty affectionate because you put a punchline after it. If the joke depends on something you know genuinely hurts him, you've stopped using your knowledge of your friend and started using it against him.
You know where the scar tissue is.
Leave it alone.
“The first time Rachel came camping with us, Mike packed her three blankets, two pillows and an air mattress. The rest of us had known him forever and didn't know he owned a blanket.”
DO #3: Roast Him With Love, NOT a Flamethrower
Please make him look ridiculous.
Tell us about the terrible car he adored, the disastrous haircut he defended long after everyone else had reached consensus, the apartment whose decorating philosophy appeared to be “things other people were throwing away,” or the meal he attempted to cook that ultimately required both a fire extinguisher and takeout. Fifteen or 20 years of friendship should have produced enough material to keep Comedy Central busy for a weekend.
But affection should always be visible underneath it.
The camping story works because Mike is the target, but Rachel is the reason it's funny. Suddenly this guy who apparently would have allowed his closest friends to succumb to hypothermia discovers blankets. Everyone laughs at him, but somehow we like him more after hearing it. The joke humanizes him. It shows us a ridiculous man falling in love.
That's the test.
Maybe he spent three weeks rehearsing how he would ask his future wife out. He consulted friends. He changed shirts four times. He constructed a plan with the logistical sophistication of the Normandy invasion. Then he approached her, his brain immediately abandoned him, and three weeks of preparation produced:
“So...you eat food?”
Embarrassing?
Absolutely.
Adorable?
Also absolutely.
Or maybe he's the guy who spent years insisting he hated dogs. Didn't want one. Didn't need one. Couldn't understand why anyone would voluntarily organize his life around an animal that eats garbage, drinks from the toilet, and sheds on the furniture. Then his future wife brought home a puppy. Six months later, the dog had its own side of the bed, a basket of toys larger than anything he'd owned as a child, and the groom was leaving parties early because “Cooper doesn't like being alone after 10:00."
We laugh at the groom.
We also immediately understand why the groom chose you as his Best Man. That's what a good roast does. It reveals the ridiculous parts of somebody without diminishing the parts that matter. The groom should survive the joke not merely intact, but somehow more lovable than he was before you told it.
If the joke makes him squirm while making everybody else love him a little more, tell it.
If it merely makes him look like an ass, don't.
You've got 15 or 20 years of material.
Find something better.
“Jennifer, place your hand flat on the table. Rob, place your hand on top of hers. Take a good look, Rob. This is the very last time you will ever have the upper hand.”
DON'T #4: Make the Marriage a Punchline
I have heard that joke at at least 200 weddings.
That is not an exaggeration.
Hell, I have made the joke over the microphone more than a dozen times myself.
I hear it considerably more often from the Maid of Honor than the Best Man, but I'm borrowing it because it may be the most indestructible wedding-toast joke ever conceived. Sometimes the bride recognizes the setup immediately. Sometimes the groom does. Sometimes half the wedding party does.
Everybody laughs anyway.
Every. Damn. Time.
So no, “don't make the marriage a punchline” does not mean you can't make jokes about marriage. Of course you can. Marriage has been comedy material since approximately five minutes after marriage was invented. Tease them about sharing a bathroom. Tease him about decorative pillows. Tease her about finally discovering what his mother has known for 25 years. If that's their relationship, tease both of them mercilessly.
The distinction is whether the marriage is part of the joke or the actual target of it.
A Best Man can joke that his friend married spectacularly above his station. He can tease the bride for voluntarily choosing this idiot. What he shouldn't do is spend five minutes constructing a case that marriage is miserable, the groom has surrendered his freedom, the bride is controlling, or one of them has made a catastrophic mistake. “Ball and chain” jokes were tired when Fred Flintstone was telling them, and the groom's wedding day is a particularly strange time to stage a comedic intervention about the institution of marriage.
Nobody needs that energy at the wedding.
Especially from the man standing beside the groom.
“Of all the questionable decisions I've watched Matt make, marrying Sarah is irritatingly difficult to make fun of.”
DO #4: Above All Else, Support the Couple
This is the part that can disappear when a Best Man becomes too focused on getting laughs.
You're standing there because the groom chose you.
But the reason you're standing there tonight is that he chose someone else.
A great Best Man speech eventually makes room for that.
Maybe you watched your friend change when she arrived. Maybe he became calmer. Maybe happier. Maybe he started leaving the bar earlier, bought furniture that required neither an Allen wrench nor a tetanus shot, and somehow acquired decorative throw pillows he is forbidden to actually throw. Maybe nothing dramatic changed at all. Maybe he was already a pretty damn good man and simply found the person beside whom he was most completely himself.
Say that.
You don't need to become Hallmark. You don't need swelling violins. You certainly don't need to pretend the groom was a feral animal whom the bride heroically domesticated. And please don't congratulate her for “putting up with him” for the rest of her life. She just married the man. Presumably she likes him.
The Best Man is uniquely positioned to say something stronger: I've known this man for most of my life. I know exactly who he is. I know what he looks like at his best and at his absolute dumbest. And I am thrilled that the two of you found each other.
That's support.
You can spend four minutes making the groom wish he'd chosen somebody else to hold the microphone and still leave absolutely no doubt that you believe in the marriage.
Roast the man.
Support the couple.
“When Scott asked me to be Best Man, I started thinking about everything we've been through together. My divorce. My second marriage. That year I lived in Phoenix...”
DON'T #5: Make Yourself the Main Character
It happens more often than you'd expect.
Five minutes into the Best Man speech, I know where the Best Man went to college, what he majored in, how he met his wife, why he left his first job, and enough about his divorce that I'm beginning to develop opinions about the settlement.
Meanwhile, the groom has become a supporting character in his own speech.
Your history matters because it intersects with his. If something terrible happened to you and the groom's response demonstrates exactly why you love him, tell us. If you need to explain where the two of you met or what was happening in your lives when a story occurred, give us the context. You are obviously going to appear in your own memories. This isn't The Great Gatsby. You don't need to pretend you were merely standing in the corner observing Nick's life.
But eventually the camera needs to find the groom.
A useful test is to ask what the story tells us about him. If the answer is “not much, but it does explain why I moved to Phoenix,” congratulations on the autobiography. Perhaps save Chapter Six for another occasion.
This is his wedding.
Not the unauthorized pilot episode for your podcast.
“The first time Megan came to one of our parties, we gave her three weeks. A decade later, I'm starting to think she might stick.”
DO #5: Talk about the Bride
I've heard Best Man speeches where the bride receives approximately the same attention as the venue's emergency exits.
There she is.
Lovely girl.
Anyway, back to Vegas.
You don't necessarily know the bride as well as you know the groom. Sometimes you barely know her at all. Don't manufacture intimacy that doesn't exist. But she is rather consequential to the proceedings, and very often the Best Man does know her well. She may have been part of the friend group for years. She may be his friend independently of the groom. They may vacation together, spend holidays together, raise children alongside one another, and possess an entire friendship that does not cease to exist when the groom leaves the room.
Talk to her.
One of the loveliest things a Best Man can give a bride is a perspective she couldn't possibly have: what her husband looked like to his friends when he was falling in love with her. Maybe the guys assumed she'd be scared off. Then she came back. And back. She survived the camping trip. She learned the nicknames. She stopped asking why nobody lets Craig order tequila. Eventually, nobody could imagine the group without her.
Or maybe you're his older brother. When you were kids, he always walked you home. He made you stay on the inside of the sidewalk, positioned himself between you and traffic and treated every passing Buick as though it had been dispatched specifically to assassinate his little brother. Then you met Rachel and noticed something.
He still does it.
He takes care of the people he loves.
Tell her that.
Tell her what you noticed.
Tell her what changed. Or tell her that nothing fundamental changed—that the man she loves is the same loyal, ridiculous, infuriatingly dependable guy you've known since elementary school, and you're thrilled she sees in him what you always did.
The bride is not a guest star in your buddy's story.
She's the reason you're holding the microphone.
“Webster's Dictionary defines marriage as—”
DON'T #6: Invite Webster to the Wedding
No.
I don't care how Webster defines marriage.
Neither does Webster.
There is something about being handed a microphone at a wedding that causes otherwise normal human beings to begin speaking in a dialect they have never used before. Suddenly there are quotations from philosophers they've never read, solemn observations about the journey of life, definitions of words everybody already understands, and language that hasn't been heard outside a seventh-grade research paper since approximately 1994.
You don't need to sound profound.
You need to sound like you.
If you've spent your friendship communicating primarily through sarcasm, insults, movie quotations and text messages consisting almost entirely of GIFs, nobody expects you to become Robert Frost because he put on a tuxedo. The room doesn't need somebody else's observation about friendship when you have years of evidence sitting six feet away.
And there is an important distinction here. Familiar humor is fine. I just defended a joke I've heard 200 times. A joke only has to be funny. Nobody leaves a wedding furious because the Best Man failed to produce a previously unpublished theory of comedy.
Borrowed emotion is different.
Sentiment has to sound like it belongs to the person saying it.
“You've been my brother my entire life. But I've never been prouder to call you my brother than I am today.”
DO #6: Say the Things Guys Are Terrible at Saying
Men are spectacular at approaching genuine emotion and then fleeing the scene.
I've watched Best Men get right to the edge of saying something beautiful and panic. They start talking about what their brother means to them, feel an unfamiliar sensation occurring somewhere behind the sternum, and immediately deploy another joke before anyone can determine whether they possess feelings.
Gentlemen.
You are allowed to love your friend.
You are allowed to tell him.
You are even allowed to cry.
Nobody is revoking your membership.
I've watched a brother spend five minutes absolutely destroying the groom and then say one simple sentence: “You've been my brother my entire life. But I've never been prouder to call you my brother than I am today.”
That's it.
Mom is gone. Dad is gone. The groom is gone. The Best Man is trying desperately not to go. Half the wedding party suddenly needs napkins for reasons unrelated to dinner.
And I'm behind the booth pretending to adjust something on my mixer because apparently there is dust in my eye.
I've also heard men almost apologize for the emotion before they express it: “I'm not going to get emotional. Paul knows I love him. I assume. We've never discussed it.”
That's funny precisely because it's true.
Discuss it.
This may be one of the only times in your adult life when you can stand in front of everyone you know, tell your best friend exactly what he means to you, cry while doing it, hug him afterward and have absolutely nobody question any of it.
Take advantage of the loophole.
You don't need poetry. You don't need a quotation. You don't need Webster.
Say the thing that's true.
“I know dinner is waiting, but I've cut this down to the 11 stories I consider legally defensible.”
DON'T #7: Release the Director's Cut
There comes a point in every excessively long Best Man speech when the room begins to die in slow motion. Phones appear beneath tables. Drinks disappear faster. Somebody goes to the restroom and returns looking faintly disappointed that the speech is still happening. A child begins rotating a dinner roll in his hands with the vacant fascination of someone stranded at sea. Eventually, the caterer makes eye contact with me. Then the bride makes eye contact with me. Everybody knows I have a microphone fader. Everybody also knows social convention is the only thing preventing me from using it.
Then the Best Man says:
“I've got one more story.”
Somewhere in the kitchen, a chicken breast dies for the second time.
You do not need 12 stories. You don't need nine. You probably don't need five. A great five-minute speech can feel like two minutes. A bad 12-minute speech can make you acutely aware that time is a human construct.
And length is deceptive because every Best Man believes his stories are shorter than they are. “This will only take a second” has never taken a second in the recorded history of human speech. The three-minute story you told the guys at the bachelor party becomes six minutes once you explain who everyone is, why you were there, what happened the previous evening, why Tyler was wearing one shoe, and why the police officer was technically mistaken.
Edit.
At 15 minutes, you had better be Springsteen.
“There are 50 stories I could tell about Danny tonight. Fortunately for everybody waiting to eat, I'm going to tell you one.”
DO #7: Leave Them Wanting More
One great story beats six pretty good ones.
Almost every time.
Set it up. Tell it. Let it breathe. Make the turn. Move on. There is no obligation to present the complete oral history of your friendship simply because the venue gave you a microphone and the DJ hasn't wrestled it away yet.
And beware the four most terrifying words a Best Man can utter after apparently reaching the end:
“Oh! Before I forget...”
Forget.
Whatever you just remembered can be told at Thanksgiving.
A speech should have an arc. Make us laugh. Show us something about your friend. Say something meaningful about the couple. Raise the glass. Sit down. This is not a Marvel movie. Nobody needs a post-credits scene.
There is something enormously satisfying about a Best Man who knows when he's finished. Nobody has ever complained that a wonderful speech ended before they became tired of it.
Leave us wishing you'd told one more story.
Don't actually tell it.
“I started drinking at noon because I knew eventually somebody was going to give me a microphone. Frankly, this is on you people.”
DON'T #8: Rely on Liquid Courage
A drink before the speech? Fine. Two? Know yourself. Seven? Jack has some notes.
Alcohol has written more terrible Best Man speeches than ChatGPT ever will. The progression is remarkably consistent. The Best Man is nervous, so he has one drink to loosen up. Introductions take longer than expected, so he has another. Dinner gets delayed. Another. By the time I hand him the microphone, the concise four-minute speech he wrote that afternoon has become an 18-minute TED Talk titled Why I Love This Motherfucker.
And alcohol is an unusually treacherous cowriter because, at approximately the same rate that it makes you a worse public speaker, it makes you less capable of recognizing that you're becoming a worse public speaker. Paragraphs repeat. Stories acquire sequels. Previously rejected material is reinstated. He remembers things that weren't in the speech, forgets why he remembered them, and begins interpreting increasingly desperate laughter from the groomsmen as an invitation to continue.
It isn't.
The original ending disappears entirely. New endings are attempted. There may be singing. At some point, a second groomsman approaches under the pretense of offering emotional support when his actual assignment is clearly microphone extraction.
At some point, Jack Daniel's stopped providing courage and started demanding creative control.
“To Matt and Lauren: may you always be as happy as you are tonight—and may Matt remember absolutely none of what I just said tomorrow morning.”
DO #8: End by Raising Your Glass, Then Keep Raising It
There is an easy solution to the liquid-courage problem.
Wait.
Give the speech first.
Then drink like a groomsman.
The Best Man has responsibilities throughout the day, and this is one of them. You don't have to be stone-cold sober. You aren't operating heavy machinery—unless somebody has made a truly catastrophic decision about who is moving the DJ equipment afterward. But if you know alcohol makes you louder, longer, less filtered or significantly more convinced of your own comedic genius, save the serious drinking until after the microphone is safely back in my hand.
And when you reach the end, actually toast the couple.
It is astonishing how many speeches simply...stop. There is a final joke, an awkward “So, yeah,” and then the Best Man sits down while half the room is holding champagne in suspended animation waiting to discover whether we're doing anything with it.
We are.
Raise the glass.
Say their names.
Wish them something wonderful.
Let the room respond.
Drink.
Then return the microphone.
Congratulations. Your official responsibilities involving public speaking are over, and you are now free to pursue the evening's remaining responsibilities with whatever level of enthusiasm your liver, dignity and tomorrow morning are willing to negotiate.
Keep raising that glass.
Just don't ask for my microphone back.
“I wrote all of this down because apparently ‘I'll just wing it’ was not sufficiently reassuring to my wife.”
DON'T #9: Deliver Your Speech to Your Phone
Use notes.
Please.
I would much rather watch a Best Man glance occasionally at his phone than watch him stare into the middle distance for 40 seconds while desperately trying to remember whether the next story happened in Nashville or New Orleans.
Your phone is not the problem.
Your relationship with it is.
I've watched speakers spend an entire toast staring downward, scrolling, squinting and occasionally swiping the wrong direction with the expression of someone attempting to reset an Apple ID. The bride and groom are sitting six feet away, but the speech is apparently being delivered directly to an iPhone.
Then the screen goes dark.
Face ID fails.
The Best Man enters the wrong passcode.
And 150 people briefly become emotionally invested in whether he remembers his own birthday.
Write the speech down. Put the important beats in front of you. If you need every word, fine. Paper works, too, although a trembling sheet of printer paper can amplify nerves in ways that make the Best Man appear to be communicating through semaphore.
Use whatever helps you.
Just remember that the people you're talking to are not inside the screen.
“I have three pages of notes. Don't worry. Two of them just say LOOK AT THEM.”
DO #9: LOOK UP!
This sounds ridiculously simple until you watch how many people don't do it.
Too often, the Best Man stares at his screen with the expression of a man reviewing the Terms and Conditions for a software update.
“Jason...has...always...been...there...for...me. By continuing to listen to this speech, you acknowledge and agree that Jason is a wonderful friend and that Mostov DJ Services is not responsible for any emotional damages arising from anecdotes disclosed herein.”
Look at the groom when you're talking about him. Look at the bride when you're talking to her. Look at his parents when you tell the childhood story that makes them immediately recognize the seven-year-old version of the man sitting in front of them. Look around the room when you're telling the joke.
Connection does an extraordinary amount of work for a speaker.
You don't need polished public-speaking technique. You don't need to know where to put your hands. You don't need to pace the floor like a motivational speaker who has recently discovered cryptocurrency. You simply need to stop periodically reading the speech and give it to the people it was written for.
This is especially important when you get to the sincere part. If you've just spent four minutes roasting your best friend and now you're finally going to tell him that you love him, don't tell Samsung.
Look at him.
And if you lose your place because you looked up?
That's why God invented scrolling.
“Marriage is a journey of two souls joining together as they embark upon—”
DON'T #10: Write a Speech That Sounds Like a Speech
Who talks like that?
Not you.
At least, I hope not.
This is different from inviting Webster. Webster is borrowed profundity. This is what happens when a Best Man becomes so convinced that a wedding speech must sound important that he edits every trace of himself out of it. Suddenly the guy who called the groom a dumbass 45 minutes earlier is discussing “the sacred journey upon which two souls now embark.”
Stop.
Your friend didn't ask a greeting card to be his Best Man.
He asked you.
The best speeches I've heard sound like somebody talking—just a slightly more thoughtful, prepared and emotionally courageous version of how that person normally talks. The vocabulary can be sophisticated if the speaker's vocabulary is sophisticated. The jokes can be crude if that's genuinely the relationship and the room. The sentiment can be eloquent. None of that requires sounding artificial.
And don't confuse preparation with artificiality. Rehearse it. Edit it. Move sentences around. Cut the joke your wife told you that you absolutely cannot say. In fact, if you've rehearsed the speech 14 times, 12 went well, one ended in tears and one ended with your wife saying, “You absolutely cannot say that,” you're probably taking the assignment seriously.
Preparation should make you sound more like yourself, not less.
Don't write what you think a Best Man is supposed to say.
Write what you have to say.
“I've called Mark needing help at two in the morning exactly three times in my life. He's never once asked why. He just says, ‘Where are you? I'm on my way.’ The fact that two of those calls were technically his fault is beside the point.”
DO #10: Speak from the Heart
Now I know something about Mark.
He may occasionally be an idiot. He may even be the reason assistance became necessary. But when somebody he loves calls him at two in the morning, he shows up.
That's character.
And that's the advantage the Best Man has over every quotation, template, joke website and generic speech ever written. You were there.
Maybe you're his younger brother, and when you were kids he always walked you home. He made you stay on the inside of the sidewalk. He watched traffic with such vigilance that apparently no automobile anywhere in the continental United States could be trusted. Years later, you met Rachel and realized he still does exactly the same thing.
He takes care of the people he loves.
Maybe when your dad died, you were 17 and terrified. Your brother was 21 and probably just as terrified, but you didn't realize that until years later because he made sure you were okay first. Maybe your marriage fell apart and your best friend didn't tell you everything would be fine. He showed up with pizza, sat beside you until two in the morning and didn't leave until he knew you were okay.
Those stories don't need decoration.
They don't need Webster.
They don't need a punchline every 20 seconds.
They need you to tell the truth.
Tell us why this idiot is your best friend. Tell him why you're proud of him. Tell her why you're happy he found her. Tell them what you hope for the life they're beginning together. You may never again have exactly this audience, exactly this occasion and exactly this permission to say something you probably should have told him years ago.
Use it.
Then raise your glass.
The Privilege of Knowing Too Much
The Best Man occupies a strange and wonderful place at a wedding. He is the keeper of the groom's past and a witness to his future. He knew this guy before the suit. Before the vows. Before the mortgage, the joint checking account and the decorative throw pillows he is apparently forbidden to actually throw. He remembers the stupid kid, but he also knows the grown man.
He remembers the terrible haircut. The first car. The broken heart. The questionable decisions. The nights that seemed incredibly important at 22 and are now mostly funny because everyone survived them. He knows stories the groom's parents don't know. He knows stories the bride probably does know. He knows stories the bride absolutely does not need to learn through a wireless microphone between the salad and the chicken marsala.
And that is precisely why the groom chose him.
Not because he knows everything.
Because he can be trusted with everything he knows.
He also watched his friend fall in love. He watched another person become part of the story. He may have watched the groom change, or perhaps he simply watched qualities that were always there become more visible. The kid who walked his little brother home became the man who takes care of his wife. The guy who would answer the phone at two in the morning became the husband who will undoubtedly show up when his family needs him. The idiot who once lived on frozen pizza and owned one towel somehow became a man discussing mortgage rates and debating paint colors.
That is an extraordinary perspective.
And an extraordinary privilege.
The Best Man speech isn't really about proving that you possess the most incriminating archive. Everybody already assumes you do. It's about deciding what portion of that archive tells us something worth knowing about the man who just got married.
Make people laugh. Embarrass him. Make him squirm. Tell a great story. Maybe tell two. Show us the groom through the eyes of somebody who has loved him for years. Talk about the woman he married. Get sentimental. Be inappropriate if the room allows it. Keep it clean if the room demands it. Use common sense.
But there is one boundary that should not require any judgment call.
A Best Man speech can embarrass the groom. It can make him squirm. It can be irreverent, inappropriate, sentimental, ridiculous, and occasionally a little dangerous.
But it should never sever a friendship.
It should never burn a bridge.
And for the love of God, it should never end a marriage.
Sometimes friendship is demonstrated by the story you tell.
Sometimes it's demonstrated by the 37 stories you don't.
So make them laugh. Make Grandma laugh. Make his mother wonder exactly what she missed between the ages of 18 and 22. Make the groom bury his face in his hands. Make the bride laugh at the ridiculous man she just married. And somewhere along the way, make everyone in that room understand why you're proud to be standing beside him.
Then raise your glass.
Hug your friend.
Hand the microphone back to the DJ.
And for the love of everything holy, if you find yourself beginning a sentence with:
“The groom is probably going to kill me for telling you this...”
Take the warning.
He probably has a reason.
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