Worried your best man speech just won’t be funny?

So you’ve been given one of the biggest honors a friend can give you.  They’ve asked you to be the best man at the wedding.  It’s great isn’t it?  

Question is – just how terrified are you?  

Do you want to do a great job?  Do you want to give a funny best man speech?  The kind that has the audience rocking and crying with laughter. The kind that has people coming up to you after, slapping you on the back and telling you what a great job you did.

Get the secrets to giving a great best man speech here

The problem

We can all tell of a time when we saw a great wedding speech.  In our heads we said to ourselves that if we ever got the chance that’s just how we would do it.  The problem is now that the time has come you’re not certain how you’re going to do it.  You want to do a great job but are you’re afraid you’re somehow going to mess it up.  In your head you’re now staring to think that you’ll ruin the whole day.  Have you assumed that people who give a great speech have some kind of natural talent?  Have you decided that they are comedians who can hold the audience in the palm of their hand?

Want to know a dirty little secret?

People who deliver great best man speeches don’t have to be natural comedians.  They aren’t that at all.  They are just ordinary people. Trust me I know this because I have experience of it.  The first speech I ever gave just bombed.  It was terrible. I knew it all the way through the speech and it just showed.  Fast forward to my next speech which was a totally different story.  It turned out to be so good that it almost backfired on me.  Why?  My wife and I almost got into an argument because she got so sick of so many people telling her how fantastic I’d been.

The dirty little secrets I learned?  

• I planned exactly what I was going to say.
• I learned what made comedians funny
• I did my research
• I put it all together

It all came together great and once I’d done it, I worked out I could do it over and over again because if you approach it right – it’s easy.  

One other difference that many don’t know.  The stress of delivering that first speech meant I was unable to enjoy that day for my friend.  Because I was ready the second time, I think was so relaxed I enjoyed the day almost as much as the groom

It’s now even easier for today’s best man

Today’s best man can find professionally prepared resources to take the strain.  Do you want to deliver a funny best mans speech with a lot less work?  If there was a package that you could use to write a long speech or a short speech would you want it.  If there was a package with opening & closing toasts would you want it?  If there was a package with wedding jokes in it would you want it?

If all of that came in a single package, with $80 of bonuses and it came with a 60 day guarantee would you want to know where to get it?

Well I can tell you its right here

The Biggest Mistake I Made

The very first time I was the best man I made a mistake. The mistake I made was to get sucked into the day and to savor the atmosphere before I had completed my job. When I look back on it I was far from a great best man.

My advice don't underestimate what it is you need to do on the day. It's very easy to do nothing watch the day go by, watch the guests standing with a drink with smiles on their faces and finally see the sun shine on the children as they run and play and give the day that special magic. Wedding days can be almost hypnotic in that way. I know - I fell under it's spell. As a result I took my eye off the ball on a number of jobs I had to do.

The worst mistake I made was to stop watching the photographer while taking the shots of the bride and groom. He took shot after shot and failed to take into consideration that it wasn't about him and his 'masterpiece'. As a result my best friend and his bride started to feel the effects of the hot sun.

I often look back on the day and that part often crops up. I know now what I should have been doing. I could have enjoyed the day and still got it right. In the next part I'll show some of the top tips you can use to make the day a roaring success.

Start Now and the Ideas Will Come

Standing up and delivering a best mans speech is daunting for many. One of the reasons is that they feel an overwhelming pressure to deliver a great or funny best man speech. Even at the point the best man stands up on the wedding day, the question of "is it good enough?" is running through their head.

A well planned best mans speech helps to take that fear away. It's one of the secrets to best man speeches that so many overlook.

And the secret to a well planned best mans speech? - Start Planning Now.

And here's why!

Set up a folder, a wallet, whatever. Just set something up to start gathering your ideas.

That simple act of setting up a folder will open your mind to opportunities to see content for your speech. Things you may not ever have noticed before. Once you decide to plan, you send a message to your mind that your on the lookout for material for your best man speech.

There is a scientific explanation, which you don't need to understand, except to know that you will start seeing things all over the place.

The best example to illustrate how it works is a new car. Have you ever noticed that when you buy a new car and have spent a little bit of time in it, you start noticing the same car all over the place. It's not that there are more of them - it's just that you've opened your mind to the sight of them.

It's exactly the same for your speech. Once you've focused on needing material for a speech your mind will start noticing things that might make good material. And when you see it - store it. Don't try to decide whether or not it will work - that's for another time. Right now you want to have plenty of potential material and the option to drop some if rather than desperately searching for something with 24 hours to go.

It's one of the ways the writers of the CSI shows work. If it's good enough for them, surely you should consider it for your best mans speech.

Five Minutes to Show Time

Although there is so much to learn about writing and preparing a best man speech, some readers will already be there. The wedding is imminent and your beyond needing to know how to write a speech. So it's worth taking a short fast forward for some quick tips you can employ five minutes from showtime.

Picture the scene.

You're at the wedding reception. Some speeches have already happened, depending on the running order. You are about five minutes from your best man speech. Before you know it you're up. It could go one of two ways. You deliver a great best man speech or you mumble and freeze.

This can all depend on what you do in the minutes leading up to the point where you get up.

Grab some water

That's right - WATER. Have some extra on standby.

Get your speech out

Very slowly take your time and just make sure, everything is in the right order.

Have a quick skim through it just to see some key points. If you've had a dry run or several, you should start to see some key points and your mind will start to tell you what comes next.

Put it Back

Make sure you've put your speech back in your pocket

Check your Breathing

If you find you're breathing a little fast or a little bit shallow start to slow your breathing down and increase the depth of your breathing a bit. Fast shallow breaths will not only make you dizzy, they'll make your throat dry out, your voice sound funny and your breathing will be wrong so it will put your timing off.

Stand Up

Relax and stand up - you're on!

It's all in the Planning

There are several secrets to a great best mans speech. The good news is that anyone wanting to write the kind of best man wedding speech that the guests will still be talking about after the wedding has passed can do it. Whether you want it to be a funny speech or a heartwarming toast that won't leave a dry eye in the house, you can do it if you remember the rules.

We call them secrets, but in truth they're not. They're quite easy stages you need to go through and they start well before a wedding.

One of the first 'secrets' is planning. The finest Best Man Speeches are planned ones. Do not (I repeat - DO NOT), think that you'll wing it on the day of the wedding after you've had a couple of stiff drinks to steady the nerves. That truly would be a recipe for disaster.

Often people want to write a funny best man speech. No comedian gets up after drinking too much and delivers his jokes off the cuff. They know it and so should you.

What you need to do is begin thinking about putting together a speech as soon as you're asked. Have a think about whether you want a moving best man speech or a funny one. Do you want to have a bit of both? These are the kinds of questions to start off with.

Why plan? Well Lot's of reasons. There are the questions above. Then there's the material - where are you going to get that from. How are you going to deliver it - traditional speech style or are you going for video. These are all things to consider and why planning is vital.

One final thing for the time being on planning. Public speaking is a big fear for so many people. If you're one of these people a properly planned speech will help you reduce some of the worry. This in turn will help you focus on the other things to give you the confidence that when you stand up you're ready to give one of the greatest best man speeches possible.

We're on Squidoo as well

I've decided to create a page on Squidoo. Because I wanted to be able to link in to as many resources as possible to help you be the hottest best man and to write and deliver a great best man's speech I decided it was important to tap into another source. That way I decided you could visit whichever site you preferred.

If you want to stop by (you can even try out the poll that I've started), you would be more than welcome.

visit us at our new squidoo page

So You're The Best Man - Congratulations

So you've taken on the role of Best Man.

If the thought of giving a speech has you terrified - don't worry, you're not alone. Public speaking is one of the biggest phobias going. More people are afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying.

That's a strange thought really but shows how much people fear it.

What I've done here is relaunch my blog on how to be a great best man and more importantly put you in touch with ways to create and give the kind of best man speech that has them crying with laughter. If that's not what you're after I'm going to include as much as I can lay my hands on to help you deliver the perfect speech.

You can subscribe to the posts if you wish so that you can stay on top of my entries or just keep on stopping by.

If you're not the best man, but you know someone who is, please tell them about this site. Better still e-mail them the link.