Best Man Wedding Toast Tips

Archive for the ‘memorable wedding toasts’ Category

After my sisters wedding I was asked to be the best man in a long time friend from high school’s wedding.  I knew it was going to be very large wedding (I think there were over 200 people there) and I needed to be better prepared for this best man toast then I was at my sisters wedding.

One of the things I did first was searched for some help on the internet.  I found a guide that helped me immensely in preparing for my toast.  You can check it out here if you are interested.

The last thing I wanted to do was get up there and fumble around for the right words to say.  I mean this was a really big deal.  So I wrote down some of the things I wanted the speech to do and built the best man toast around it.

1 – Share some memorable, slightly embarrassing moments from their past.
Since I have known the groom for over 20 years and in this case I actually had worked with the bride for about 4 years before the two of them meet, I had plenty of material to choose from.  My goal here was not to dredge up the past that may cause an issue but there are times in everyone’s life that are funny and make us squirm a little.  You know those “I can’t believe I did that.” moments.

2 – Show how much their love was known to all of us.
This was hard for me.  Not because they didn’t show their love, but because how, as a guy, was I going to do this without looking like a total sap.  Well my wife convinced me that doing this would be one of the biggest reasons that my best man toast would be remembered.

3 – Finish with a memorable poem or story.
I don’t know why, probably because I am not a writer, but using someone elses words seemed like the best way to close my wedding toast.  Especially if I could find something that tugged at your heart.  I ended up using “There’s always room for a couple of beers.” story I talked about in this post Using Poems and Stories in Your Best Man Speech.

It ended up being he best wedding toast I have ever given. Maybe it was because I had know the two of them for so long and so well.  Or may it might have been the story I read at the end.  Whatever it was, when I looked up from the paper I was reading my speech from people were standing and clapping.  I am not kidding…that’s not an exaggeration they were actually standing and clapping.  When I looked at the bride and groom they both had smiles and tears in their eyes. For me it was a perfect storm, everything came together perfectly all at the right moment.

Mission Accomplished.