Best Man Speech UK: Structure, Template and 3 Examples

Example 1: Childhood friend, classic and funny (about four minutes)

Good evening, everyone. On behalf of the bridesmaids, thank you, Callum, for those kind words. They have looked wonderful all day, which is more than can be said for the groomsmen, who were dressed by a man whose idea of formal is a clean Everton shirt.

I'm Rob. Callum and I have been friends since we were seven, when he moved in two doors down and introduced himself by asking whether our garden fence could take the weight of a child. It could not. His dad fixed it.

One thing about the stag do. It was in Newquay. That is all I am permitted to say, and it is all the bride's nan needs to know.

Here is the story that explains him.

When we were nineteen, Callum decided we were going to Edinburgh for the Fringe. We had no money, so we went on the Megabus. Eleven hours. He planned the whole thing, with a spreadsheet, colour coded. The one thing he didn't plan was the coach breaking down on the hard shoulder of the M6 outside Preston at two in the morning, in August rain, which is still rain.

Forty people on that coach, and within ten minutes Callum had found out which of them had the furthest to go, borrowed a charger for a woman whose daughter was waiting up in Glasgow, and talked the driver into opening the luggage hold so a lad could get to his insulin. He didn't panic. He looked at the rain and said, "Right. Who needs what?"

We missed the first three shows on the spreadsheet. He didn't care, because on that hard shoulder he'd made four friends, and one of them still sends him a Christmas card.

That's Callum. Things go wrong around him as often as around anybody else. He is just the only person I know who treats it as a chance to find out who needs what.

Then he met Priya, and I knew it was serious because the spreadsheets stopped. The man who colour-coded a trip to the Fringe started turning up to things with no plan at all, looking perfectly happy. I asked him what had changed, and he said, "She's just better at evenings than I am."

Priya, in twenty-two years I have never seen him this calm. You didn't fix him. He was never broken. You gave him somebody to look after who looks after him back. Thank you for that. You're stuck with both of us now, and I apologise for the group chat.

One message, from Callum's nan, Pat, watching from home: she still thinks he should have worn a tie. He is wearing a tie, Pat. We'll send you a photo.

So, ladies and gentlemen, please stand and raise your glasses. To the bride and groom, Priya and Callum. May you never stop asking each other who needs what. The answer is usually a cup of tea.

One story that roasts his planning and ends with him looking kind, and a stag line that says nothing.

Example 2: Brother, warm with one roast (about four minutes)

Evening, everyone. On behalf of the bridesmaids, thank you, Lewis, for the toast and the kind words. They've looked after Aisha beautifully today, and they've looked after me, which mostly meant telling me to stop pacing.

I'm Jamie. I'm the older brother, which means I have been around for every day of the groom's life and have been asked by our mum to choose the stories carefully. So, on the stag do: it was Blackpool, nobody was arrested, and that is the full report.

Lewis and I shared a bedroom for eleven years, so I know exactly how long he can hold a grudge over a borrowed CD, which is eight months, and exactly how loud a fourteen-year-old can be when Leeds United concede in the ninetieth minute. He's still a Leeds fan. I've always said that tells you something about his loyalty, and loyalty is the kindest word for it.

But the story I want to tell is from when he was fifteen and I was eighteen.

That spring our mum was in hospital for six weeks. I was supposed to be the one holding things together, and I wasn't. I was eighteen and frightened and I mostly dealt with it by being out of the house.

Lewis dealt with it differently. He had a paper round that paid about twelve pounds a week, and he spent all of it, every week, on Tesco meal deals. One for him, one for me. He'd leave mine in the fridge with a note on it. Usually just "Eat this", or "Chicken one again, sorry". Six weeks. I never once came home to an empty fridge. I never once thanked him for it either, because I was eighteen and an idiot. So, Lewis, in front of everyone: thank you. That is the best anyone has ever looked after me, and you were fifteen, and it was a meal deal.

That's my brother. He notices what people need and he gets on with it, and he never makes a fuss about it. The trouble was that for a very long time he did it for everyone except himself.

Then he met Aisha.

I knew it was different because he started telling me what she'd said, and how she'd said it, like he was still turning it over on the drive home. And then one Sunday I came round and she'd made him lunch, and he was just sitting there eating it. Being looked after. I nearly took a photo.

Aisha, you've done something the rest of us tried to do for his whole life and couldn't. You got him to let someone look after him. Welcome to the family. You already know where the fridge is.

Ladies and gentlemen, please stand and raise your glasses. To Mr and Mrs Okafor. May there always be something in the fridge, and a note on it.

A brother has the most history and this trusts one memory. The roast hurts nobody.

Example 3: Best woman, for a groom marrying a groom (about four minutes)

Good evening, everyone. I'm Gemma, I'm Ollie's best woman, and on behalf of the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and whatever I am, thank you, Ollie and Sam, for the toast and the kind words. We have scrubbed up all right, haven't we.

Dev has just done a lovely job on Sam, so I'll leave Sam's childhood in his capable hands and talk about the groom I've known for fourteen years. Ollie and I met in our first week at Sheffield, behind the bar of a Wetherspoons where neither of us had any business working, and we've been each other's emergency contact ever since. He asked me to be his best woman in a text that just said "you're up", and followed it with "no stag stories". So I'll say only this: Whitby, one dinghy, no further questions.

Here's the story that tells you who Ollie is.

That first year we worked the late shift together, and the bar was a forty-minute walk from my halls. Every single night, Ollie walked me home. I assumed he lived near me. It was a year before his flatmate mentioned, in passing, that Ollie lived twenty minutes in the other direction and had been doing an hour and a half round trip every night for twelve months so I wouldn't walk back on my own. When I asked, he looked genuinely puzzled and said, "Well, what else was I going to do?"

That's Ollie. He does the right thing so automatically that he doesn't notice he's doing it, and he will be mortified that I'm telling you. Sorry, Ol. You're on the wrong side of the microphone tonight.

The flip side is that for a long time he was hopeless at letting anyone do it back. If you tried to look after Ollie, he'd thank you very politely and quietly rearrange things so you didn't have to.

Then he met Sam.

I knew within a month, because Ollie came round on a Tuesday and told me that Sam had turned up at his flat, unasked, when he had flu, with soup and a box set, and had refused to leave. And Ollie, the man who walks everyone home, had let him stay. He told me this like it was the strangest thing that had ever happened to him. I think it was.

Sam, I've watched you do what nobody else managed in fourteen years. You walked him home. You keep doing it, and he keeps letting you, and watching the two of you look after each other without either of you making a fuss about it is the best thing I've seen all year. And I've seen the dinghy.

Ollie, you are the best person I know, and I've known you long enough to be sure.

Could everyone please stand and raise your glasses. To the grooms, Ollie and Sam. May you always walk each other home.

She settles the two-best-people question in one line and adapts the reply without fuss.