How To Give An Excellent Best Man Speech

Hi. I'm Simon Bucknall and in 2008, I won the European Championship of Public Speaking. At the Art of Connection, we help ambitious professionals to connect with their audience and we do it by bringing world class communication expertise into the training room to enable our clients to persuade, influence and inspire others.

How to give a cracking best man speech? Boy, that's a toughie and if you're a guy, then you'll know what I'm saying when it gives you the sweat. What you'll get in this video are three simple ideas that can help you to develop and give a better best man speech. A don't and two do's.

The “don't” is this. If you're thinking of going on to the internet and pulling down, downloading a few gags, perhaps one or two example stories that you can use, don't. Please, please, please don't.

Why? Because, chances are at least someone in the audience will have heard it before, and you sound like an idiot. Or secondly, the audience will just sense that it doesn't feel real and connected to the groom and you'll look an idiot. Whatever you do, please don't use material from the internet.

So what do you do? Well, here's a couple of things that can help. The first is to use real material and that means going out and talking to people who know the groom. Find out about the stories of when they were young and they may do something stupid.

Find out about the good things about the groom. What is it that people that know the groom value in that person? Gathering stories is just one of the best things that you can do as the best man because all the evidence, all the ideas, all the material that you could ever need are in the hearts and minds of the commutative people that know the groom. So, that's the best resource that you can use and it does take time because you need to talk to a major different people to get a balanced picture.

The third point is this, and it may surprise you, write the speech for the benefit of the parents. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean, I've seen too many speeches where the best man lays in to the groom and makes him sound like such an idiot, you could almost sense the parents of the bride cringing and thinking, “Is this really the idiot that my darling daughter has got married?” No one ever gave a best man's speech by making the parents of the groom or the bride cry. You need them to feel good and remember everyone in that marquee or that hall or whatever room it's in, they're all there because they support and love the people that are getting married.

And if you write a speech that is going to excite and make the parents of the happy couple happy, they'll thank you for it and so will the rest of the audience. It may not seem obvious because many best men choose to come in with gags that make their best mates in the audience laugh, but that's not the whole audience. Know your audience.

There are the three tips. Please, please, please don't use the internet for material. Do use real life stories, both embarrassing and positive about the groom by talking to the people that know him.

And finally, write the speech that's going to make the parents happy because if you delight the parents, you'll delight the audience. .