KISS, Prepare and Practice For Making Best Man Speeches Successfully

Being one of the most important wedding speeches that would be given during the course of the wedding reception, best man speeches often set the mood for the rest of the evening. It would be very awful for the best man to come to the reception party without having prepared for his speech especially when he knew he has to give one ever since he was chosen to be the best man. Well, nobody is going to mind if the best man is a bit nervous, even though this could be handled easily, but the guests won’t appreciate if the figure that the best man is actually careless or negligent about his speech and has no clue regarding what he might say for his best man speech. It indicates the absence of responsibility that the best man is entrusted with. This obviously leads to a total embarrassment not only for the best man but also for the groom. Not to forget that it is also very disrespectful for the guests who would be listening to the speech. If somebody agrees to carry out a duty (the duty of a best man in this case) the very least he is able to do would be to try and deliver a simple but decent speech.

Make use of the the ‘tried and tested’ KISS approach!

In this particular case it’s a bit different than what you already know – “Keep It Short and Sweet”, or may be, “Keep It Short and Simple”. The objective of a best man speech is to toast the wedding couple as well as the bridesmaids and in the process share his thoughts on the groom, the bride and their marriage. It isn’t a way to much lengthy, speech that might bore the audience to death. Best man speeches that are longer than five minutes would probably be excessively long, if you aren’t a seasoned orator and you really know what you’re after.

If you aren’t preparing the speech you’re preparing to fail!

There isn’t any alternative to preparation. Of course, anybody could be tempted to deliver an extempore speech at times, but this may not be one of those times. There should be sufficient time to get ready and the audience is aware of that. The obvious way to accomplish this would be to actually put in writing everything that you plan to mention in your speech, then review it several times before you are happy with it. Try to memorize the key points of your best man speech – when you write your own speech it becomes a lot easier to remember. This also is going to result in a lot more self-confidence and eliminate some of the nervousness that all of us experience when we need to make a speech in front of a group of people.

Did I say, “Practice is the key.”

This is going to be the most crucial part of your entire best man speech preparation. Practice your speech hard – the more the better. Consider rehearsing your speech facing a mirror or you can even think of actually ‘test deliver’ the speech to a friend of yours. In case you are not accustomed to speaking in public, listening to yourself and becoming familiar to it is going to build the confidence you would need. If you believe you could have difficulties remembering all the topics, then jot down the key points on a few cue-cards and have them ready while making the speech. The idea is to take a look at those cards if you tend to forget some topics while making your speech. Make sure that you don’t by any means read the entire speech from a sheet of paper without having to look at your audience at all – that’s going to be a real showdown. Make use of your cue cards to give you the cues (that’s what they are for) whenever you need them and deliver your speech making eye contacts with your audience from time to time.

With some effort on your side as well as some guidance and support from friends and family members, it is very much possible to pull off a great best man speech successfully.