Win over the audience with your best man’s wedding speech

Add games and jokes to your wedding speech and you’ll have the audience crying with laughter

Everyone always looks forward to the best man’s speech because it’s likely to be the most fun and generate the most laughs… but to make sure your audience are laughing WITH you, not AT you, add in a few of these word games and jokes to your wedding speech for good measure!

The limerick game

This is a word game that everyone can enjoy. You just put a note on all the tables asking the guests to make up a short poem or limerick about the couple and read out the best ones during your speech, or ask people to read out their own.

The sweepstake game

At the start of the reception, get the ushers to ask guests to bet on the length of the speeches. The person who makes the closest guess wins the total amount, either to keep or to donate to a charity of their choice.

The key joke

This joke gets a lot of laughs and you get to chat to lots of ladies too! To play it, you first need to speak to as many female guests as you can before you all sit down to eat and fill them in on the plan. During your speech you then say something like: ‘Neil has got what you might call a chequered past, but now that he’s married to Hannah it’s time that he began afresh. So I’m asking any of his ex-girlfriends who may be present to give back the keys to his flat. Just come up here and put them in this bowl. Come on girls, don’t be shy.’

All the many girls you have spoken to beforehand, then troop up and pop their (front door, car etc) key in the bowl, while you stand and listen to the laughs!

The parcel joke

Present the bride with an enormous parcel. As she unwraps it, it should get smaller and smaller until she comes to a little box. In it, she should find a note from you that says, ‘I haven’t got much to say, but thanks for padding out my speech!’

The time filler

Worried you won’t be able to talk for long enough? Put together a video, or photographs and newspaper cuttings instead, to make a quick ‘this is your life’ style exhibition of the bride and groom.

For more ideas, have a read of our handy book, ‘The best man’s speech and duties’.