How Long Should a Best Man Speech Be?

A best man speech should last around five minutes, roughly 700 to 900 words. Anything past eight minutes and you can feel a room start to drift.

The single most common mistake I see is length. A best man stands up with fourteen brilliant stories and tries to use all of them. The result is a speech that sags in the middle and loses the very laughs it was built on.

Why shorter is almost always better

A wedding crowd is warm, well-fed and a few drinks in. They are on your side, but only for so long. Five tight minutes of your best material will always beat ten minutes that includes the merely good. Cut anything that doesn’t earn a laugh or a genuine “aww”, and you’ll be left with the speech everyone remembers.

How to time it properly

• Read it aloud, at delivery pace, with a stopwatch. We all speak faster on the day with nerves, then slower waiting for laughs, so it roughly evens out.
• If it runs past seven minutes, find two stories to cut. Not trim, cut.
• Mark a natural “early exit” point in case the room is restless.

The rule of thumb

If you finish and people wish you’d said a little more, you’ve judged it perfectly. If you finish and they’re relieved, it was too long.

Want help getting yours to the perfect length? I write bespoke best man speeches built around your stories, or read the full best man speech guide.

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