Forget the internet
Forget the internet. If you’ve reached this point because you’ve been made best man and now you’re looking for a template to copy or cut and paste joke to steal – stop. One of the fundamental facts of life is that what we do and how we do things is way funnier than some guy who’s sticking contrived jokes online for you to plunder. If, for example, you’ve decided to start your speech: ‘it’s an emotional wedding even the cake is in tiers’,
then you need help. Not from me necessarily but from the voice in the back of your mind which is saying ‘the groom’s a funny guy, he deserves better than this’. You’re right. He does.
Observations
The thing that makes people laugh in funny best man speeches is observation, and no matter how great Google is, it can’t quite yet come up with amusing observations on your friend and his life to date. But you can, and you don’t have to be a stand up to do it. Let’s think about those stand up comedians; they make a living out of simply relating everyday things, which when we hear them back make us laugh because we can relate to them. You are one step ahead of these guys because many of the guests already know the groom and his foibles so reminding them of those will be enough to bring the house down. There's an easy way to go about this...
Funny Best Man Speeches Example
- Take one anecdote from the groom’s life
- Extract exactly what it is that makes it funny
- Construct a sentence that eludes to this quality
- Revel in the laughter
This may sound overly straightforward but here’s an example of a speech I wrote recently and took a seemingly mundane anecdote and gave it some zip.
The Best Man had written to me and amongst other facts had told me that in Australia the groom had gone from delivering the sandwiches to a company to running their accounts department. On the face of it, there’s nothing there. No meaty pay off, no story, just a mundane fact, but in the background we can all see it’s got its humour.
So instead of thinking about what it says about the groom I thought what does it say about the accounts department? And then things started to fall into place. Playing on cultural stereotypes, I came up with this:
“Not only did he have amazingly bad dress sense and a fairly good grasp of the English language but he could also count without using his fingers. The Aussie accounts team held him up as a modern day god.”
That’s exactly the type of funny you’re looking for; an observation rather than an anecdote. You’re relating verbatim a story about the time he was at work….blah blah blah. You’re giving an overall humorous observation and the only trick to that skill if you’re not used to it is…time.
We all think our mates are funny and they are and that’s for a good reason so simply think what it is that tickles you about them and describe that as an observation. No long winded anecdotes and explanations.
Let’s face it; you’re friend has asked you to do him the honour of giving the best man speech, if all you can do is Google funny best man speeches, let this be where that search stops. Got out and get ‘em kid.
