Mistakes To Avoid When Giving The Best Man Speech

You’ve been given the chance of a lifetime to speak at your friend’s wedding as the best man, and although you are excited about having such an important task in your friend’s wedding, you know you might suddenly become lost for words… literally.

Preparing a best man speech can be a tough job for most, especially for those who are not good at expressing themselves in words. If you are one of these people, then your next best bet would be to hire a writer who can get the job done by writing you a speech that would remain indelible on people’s minds. Sure, the pre-written script may ease your burdens but would it actually be heartfelt and effective with a personalized touch as if you were doing it yourself?

Take these things into consideration before deciding what to do. If you are new to this, there are a lot of mistakes that you are going to make as a best man and one of the most glaring is having to show up to the ceremony unprepared.

As soon as you are informed that you may have to be responsible for “best man” duties, you should start writing your speech right away. This would give you enough time to memorize what you have to say. Even if your memory fails, you should always have cue cards handy so that you can read from them.  As you write your speech; refrain from making tacky and disrespectful comments about the couple.  Really embarrassing stories about the couple should also be discouraged.

And while we are on the topic of talking, if your wedding speech is shaping up to be a long one, then you should be thinking about chopping down your words. Wedding experts would tell you that your speech should be no more than 5 minutes long or people will start tuning you out. Here are a few more wedding speech mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Don’t let your nerves get the best of you while you are in front of the audience because ultimately it will distract everyone in the room. Remain cool, calm and collected and project to your audience.
2. “Fashionably late” is not cool when you are the best man at a wedding. Make sure that you are at the ceremony on time and that you are ready to go on stage as soon as you are called upon.
3. Although there are several guidelines as to how to write the perfect best man’s speech online, try not to copy the wording verbatim. Instead, personalize the speech as much as you can as you balance the pertinent points with tasteful humor.
4. Do not drink much alcohol before your speech.  Alcohol tends to cloud your good judgement and loosens your tongue, which can lead to embarrassment for you and the bride and groom.

Giving the best man speech is an important honor and as long as you take your job seriously and deliver a heart-felt, yet short, speech, you should do just fine.