A best man speech, beat by beat

A best man speech has seven parts and they only work in one order: the open, who you are, how you met him, the demolition, the turn, the bride, the toast. Most of the ones that fail have perfectly good jokes in them. They fail because the sincere paragraph turned up in the middle, the stories ran to five, the speaker went back to the stag do afterwards, and nobody could tell when the thing had finished.

Below is the running order I write to, with a word budget for each beat. It's the same shape behind every best man speech I write, and it has not changed much in ten years. Whole thing: about 650 words.

The seven beats

Beat	Words	What it has to do
The open	60	Get a laugh inside twenty seconds
Who you are	40	So the great-aunts stop wondering
How you met him	80	Buy the right to take the mick
The demolition	250	The bulk of it. Two or three stories
The turn	90	Stop being funny, on purpose
The bride	80	Hand the speech to the couple
The toast	50	End it so the room knows to stand

That is 650 words, which comes out around four and a half minutes at a nervous pace. If you want the argument for that number rather than a longer one, it is in how long a best man speech should be.

1. The open, about 60 words

You go last, after two other speeches and a main course. That single fact dictates this beat.

Twenty seconds is how long they give you before deciding whether this is going to be fine. The first laugh has to land inside two sentences, and it should be at your expense or the groom's. Never a guest's, and never the caterers'.

The version that works nearly every time is one flat, factual sentence about him that turns out to be ridiculous.

I'm Danny. I've known Tom since we were eleven, when he told our entire year that his uncle worked at Alton Towers. He didn't. We still queued for two hours.

That does the introduction and the first laugh in the same breath, which is why the next beat can be so short.

Things to leave out: how nervous you are (you are about to be, and announcing it makes ninety people watch for it), and any promise to keep it brief that you have no intention of honouring. "Unaccustomed as I am" is long dead. Do not revive it.

2. Who you are, about 40 words

If the open didn't already say it, say it now in one sentence: your name, how you know him, how long. Half the room has no idea who you are, and the other half only wants to know how much you have got on him.

Everyone has also been listening for a while by now. The father of the bride opened the speeches and the groom followed him, so you are the third person to introduce himself since the plates went. Say your name once, clearly, then get out of this beat.

"For those who don't know me" is allowed exactly once, here, if it is doing the introducing rather than clearing your throat. Use it twice and it becomes a verbal tic.

3. How you met him, about 80 words

This beat is your licence. You are about to spend the best part of two minutes taking him apart, and the room will only enjoy that if it already believes you are fond of him. Eighty words of shared history buys it.

Use one moment. A summary of the friendship does nothing, because "we met at university" is a fact the room could have guessed on its own. "He knocked on my door at half eleven on the first night to ask if I had a plunger, which I didn't, and which he has never explained why he needed" tells them everything in one sentence.

4. The affectionate demolition, about 250 words

The biggest block, and where most of the writing time goes. Two stories if they run long, three if they are quick. Not five.

Four rules I hold to:

• Roast him and nobody else. Not the bride, not her parents, not the guests, not the staff.
• Every story needs one detail nobody could have invented. The plunger. The two-hour queue. Specifics are what make a room believe you.
• Each story should leave the room liking him more than it did before you started. That test is more useful than any list of banned subjects.
• Exes, sackings, arrests, and anything his mother-in-law would be hearing for the first time: out, however funny.

Order the stories smallest laugh first. If your best one goes first, everything after it sounds like a slow puncture. And if you only have two good stories, use two. A padded third is worse than a short speech.

If a particular line is keeping you up, I have gone through where the line actually sits in what counts as too far in a wedding speech.

5. The turn, about 90 words

This is the beat everyone gets wrong, so it gets more space here than the jokes did.

The turn is where you stop being funny and start meaning it. Nobody in the room should notice it happening. They should just find themselves sitting differently. Botched, it sounds like a gear change with no clutch.

Never announce it

"But seriously" and "on a more serious note" turn up in almost every draft I am sent, and both cost you the moment. They tell the room to brace, and a braced room stops listening to the words and starts watching you manage a transition. Delete them both.

Turn on the same material

The mechanic that works: take the exact trait you have been mocking and show its other face. The idiot who got a whole school year to queue two hours for a lie is also a man who has always been able to get people to go along with him. Same trait, better light. The room hears the connection, so the sincere part lands as a payoff.

That's the Tom I've had since I was eleven. Here's the one I got in March. My mum was in Royal Preston for six weeks, and Tom drove me over every Sunday. He never came in, and he's never mentioned it since. He'll be furious that I have.

Land it on a fact

"He's the most loyal bloke I know" can be said about almost anybody, so it carries nothing. Six weeks of Sundays and a hospital car park could only ever have been written about Tom. One thing he actually did will always beat an adjective you reached for.

One idea, one paragraph

Ninety words. The pull after your first sincere sentence is to keep going, because it feels good and the room has gone quiet. Two more paragraphs of feeling and you've accidentally given a eulogy. Say the one thing and move.

Slow down for it

Physically: drop your volume a little, cut to about two-thirds of your joke pace, and look at him instead of at the room. The pause before you start is doing as much work as the words. If holding your nerve at this point is the bit you are worried about, the ten minutes before you stand up matter more than anything on the page, and I have written separately about how to handle wedding speech nerves.

6. The bride, about 80 words

The turn was about him. This beat hands the speech over to the pair of them, and it is where the older half of the room makes up its mind about you.

Two moves, in this order. Say something specific about her, something she did or said rather than how she looks. Then say what she has changed about him. The second one is your job and nobody else's, because you are the only speaker in the building who knew him properly beforehand.

Leave out "he's punching". It gets a laugh, and it is a joke at her expense, which breaks the one rule holding the whole speech together.

7. The toast, about 50 words

Short, and unmistakably the end. The failure I see most is a toast the room cannot identify as a toast, so people stand up raggedly, two seconds late, still holding their forks.

Say the instruction plainly. "Please be upstanding" and "raise your glasses" are conventions worth keeping, because they are the cue everyone already knows.

Rachel, thank you for taking him on. Tom, you got very lucky and I think you know it. Ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding, and raise your glasses to the bride and groom.

Then sit down. No coda, and no second toast to anyone you forgot.

Two best men, splitting it

Two of you is still one speech, and it does not buy you double the running time. There is still one open, one turn and one toast. What changes is who carries each, and the trap is the two of you telling the same story twice.

How I divide a joint best man speech:

• Open together, and use the novelty. The room has noticed there are two of you, so get one line in about it before anyone else does.
• One of you introduces both. Two separate introductions is thirty seconds of nothing.
• Alternate the demolition in short chunks, two or three each. Each story belongs to one speaker, decided in advance, and neither of you touches the other's material.
• Hand the turn to one voice alone. Sincerity does not survive being passed back and forth, and the other person visibly stepping back makes the room lean in.
• Come back together for the toast, and say the last line in unison.

Budget six or seven minutes for the pair of you, against four and a half for a solo speech, and write the speaker's name against every paragraph so you both know your cue on the day. Then run it out loud together at least once. The handovers are the only part of a joint speech neither of you can practise alone, and they are where the timing goes.

Where to start writing

Write the turn first, before any of the jokes. It's the hardest ninety words in the speech, and everything in front of it exists to set it up. Once you know what the sincere paragraph says, you know which stories earn their place: the ones that make it land harder. Work backwards from there.

Then read the whole thing out loud twice. Once against a clock, and once to somebody who was not there for any of the stories, because they are the only person who can tell you which bits stop making sense without you in the room.