Best Man Tips

How to Set About It

The key to speech-writing is to split the process up into a number of smaller jobs. That way, the work stays under control and is much less daunting. So, how do you set about it?

First of all, you will need something to jot down your ideas in, as and when they occur to you. Buy a small notebook that you can carry around with you. If you keep your speech constantly at the back of your mind, you will be surprised how many ideas you get. Whenever an idea for the speech occurs to you, write it down in the notebook before you forget it.

Second, you will need a larger notebook or a folder of paper or a computer file to which you will transfer all your ideas from the small notebook, along with any other ideas that occur to you when you are working on your speech.

Third, in this larger notebook, folder or file, you will need to create a skeleton outline of your speech, i.e. the main headings for all the elements your speech will, or might, include. For example:

opening lines
thanks to groom on behalf of bridesmaid
thanks to groom on behalf of self and ushers
congratulations to bride and groom
something complimentary about bride
thanks to groom for invitation to be the best man
anecdotes about the groom
interesting/amusing occurrences during the wedding preparations
jokes that could be used
quotations that could be used

It doesn't matter whether all these elements are in the order you will want them in your final speech. In fact, at this stage, you don't know what order you will want them to be in, or whether you will even want them all. That comes later. What you are doing at this point is setting up a structure and system which will allow you to file all your ideas efficiently under their appropriate headings, so that you can easily find them again when you want to consider them at the speech-writing stage.

The fourth stage is to begin collecting material for your speech.

Whenever you have an idea that you might use, add it to the file under the correct heading, so that all the material for each section of your speech is gathered together in one place: that is to say, all the possible opening lines are together, all the possible jokes are together, all the possible anecdotes are together, the names of all the people you have to thank are together, and so on. Don't try to organize the material any more than that at this stage; just get everything down on paper or into your computer file.

Any idea is a good idea. This is the brainstorming part of the speech-writing process. Don't reject any story, any joke, any anecdote, any usable idea, even if you think you will probably reject it later on. For example, a really terrible and probably unusable joke might later on bring to mind a better and potentially usable one, or if it is slightly risque you might eventually think of a way of toning it down a bit to make it suitable for the company you will be talking to. Similarly, a not very amusing anecdote might in a couple of weeks' time suggest a better one.

Obviously, as you build up your files, some sections will have more material in them than others. You will probably have more possible jokes, quotations and anecdotes than you have ideas for other parts of the speech. But that doesn't matter for the moment. Also, as ideas come to you, you may want to set up further files for categories of material you hadn't thought of at first.