A question of love

If there’s one thing a groom doesn’t want to be reminded of in his wedding day, it’s former girlfriends, and if you think that he’s not keen, then multiply that by 1 million, and you get the bride’s opinion on the matter.

However, for obvious reasons, it’s the ‘go to’ material for best men all over the world, and that’s why so many best man speeches end in disaster. For some reason a lot of best men still see the best man speech as being an opportunity to ritually humiliate the groom, and there’s no better way to achieve that then bringing his love life into focus. The days of making wedding guests squirm with sordid details of just how the groom went about finding that special someone in his life, should be well and truly in the past, but they’re not.

If you’re thinking that this speech is anything else than an amazing opportunity to celebrate the groom in a really funny, entertaining and warm way, then you’re getting it wrong. Let’s be clear, it needs to be funny, and genuinely funny at that. There’s nothing worse then delivering something you think should make people laugh and it doesn’t work. And the comedy is really important because without it there’s no balance to the speech. You can’t just stand up and spend 5 minutes saying what a great guy he is…well, you could, but it would be ritual torture for everyone.

So, leave the former girlfriends out of the equation. This day is about one person’s sensibilities more than any other, and that’s the bride. Upset her by suggesting she wasn’t the first love of the groom’s life can be a game changer for all the wrong reasons. The history of the best man speech is littered with the corpses of friendships that went west when the best man didn’t take time to understand what’s funny and what’s not. Don’t become one of them.