My Best Man Speech
I just flew in last night from the wedding of my best friend. It was an amazing time.
I was quite nervous for the best man speech/toast, but it went over fabulously. Here is the speech that I gave as I had it written down on the paper (read: not grammatically correct), in its entirety:
Good Evening everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is _________. I want to thank Graham for giving me the honour of being his best man. And I was quite excited after Graham asked me to be his best man, but then excitement turned to horror as I realized I would have to give a speech. But then the horror turned to excitement again after I was told that the point of a best man speech is to embarrass the groom.
But still I wasn’t really sure what to talk about in my speech, so I asked around and got advice from a few people. And one wise man gave me some good advice. He told me that the length of the best man's speech should be no longer than the time it takes the groom to make love ...(pause)...(Look at watch) oh, it looks like I’ve already gone about 30 seconds over…. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. (sit down)
In all seriousness folks…back to the job at hand, like I said my job today is to embarrass Graham. Now this is where my dilemma starts. It’s not that I don’t have any stories to tell, I’ve been best friends with Graham since we were in grade 7 so I’ve got tons of good stories. But I have a dilemma because: A: When I started writing down stories, most of them I had to edit, throw away, burn, or hand over to the police to help them with their enquiries. And what little that was left over may not be suitable for the dinner table, and B: Graham is going to be my best man one day and also has too much dirt on me!!
So I decided that I won’t tell any embarrassing stories…Nope, I’m not going to say anything. So I wont’ even mention all of those nights at 3am stealing garden gnomes off of peoples lawns or driving over people’s garbage cans in Graham’s Chevette.
Or how we got the bright idea one night of “borrowing” detour signs and pilons from a construction site and completely blocking off the entrance to our friend Jamie’s cul-de-sac.
And I probably shouldn’t tell you about the time that Graham lost the sunroof to his first car only a day or two after having it installed…how we were taking the car over some big jumps, and after one particular jump we looked up and noticed that the sky looked that much clearer, and then we realized that was because there was no sunroof in the way…it had flown off the car during the jump and was lying in a million pieces on the ground behind us. For months after that Graham drove around in his Chevette with a black garbage bag taped to the roof where the sunroof used to be.
And I surely won’t bring up the fact that Graham holds the eating record out of anyone I know, having eaten 7 Burger King burgers in the space of one hour. Incidentally, if anyone here didn’t get enough food to eat tonight, we all know who to blame for that.
And I’m sure that Graham would be completely embarrassed if I told you about what happened the one night several years ago that we both were working as cooks at Smitty’s restaurant. Graham got bored, so he decided to go and snoop around the attic in the restaurant to see what was up there. Well, he missed a step on one of the attic beams and ended up falling through the roof. And leave it to Graham to not only fall through the attic, but to fall through the attic and land in the boss’s office, right on top of his desk. Luckily, the boss wasn’t there, and we were able to call a friend in and patch the roof up, and Graham was able to live another day.
So I won’t mention any of these stories. So Graham, just remember when it comes time to talk about me one day, just remember how easy I went on you, and how I kept all those stories a secret okay?
One other thing I was told about the best man speech is that in my speech I should include somewhere how the bride has supposedly tamed the groom from his past youthful indiscretions and settled him down…and you know, in this case I think that is totally true. Jen has done a great job so far: as far as I know since Graham and Jen have been together Graham has yet to fall through a roof, block off a cul-de-sac, or smash any sunroofs. They are still working on his eating thing though.
In all seriousness, Graham has been a great friend to me and I’m very lucky that I’ve got to know Jenn over the last few years – and I just hope they know that I’ve always been extremely proud of both of them and honoured to call them my friends.Having got to know both of them I know they’ll always be happy together. And I look forward to the days well in the future when we all have kids and I can bring mine over to the Wood’s for a Barbecue and we can watch them play in the backyard together.
And so the last thing I was told about my best man speech is to finish it off with a quote. Someone has usually already said it, and probably said it better. So I will go out with the words of the philosopher Aristotle, who said simply "Love is a single soul inhabiting two bodies".
Graham and Jen....I wish you all the best on your journey together.
To Graham and Jen.
I was quite nervous for the best man speech/toast, but it went over fabulously. Here is the speech that I gave as I had it written down on the paper (read: not grammatically correct), in its entirety:
Good Evening everyone, for those of you who don’t know me, my name is _________. I want to thank Graham for giving me the honour of being his best man. And I was quite excited after Graham asked me to be his best man, but then excitement turned to horror as I realized I would have to give a speech. But then the horror turned to excitement again after I was told that the point of a best man speech is to embarrass the groom.
But still I wasn’t really sure what to talk about in my speech, so I asked around and got advice from a few people. And one wise man gave me some good advice. He told me that the length of the best man's speech should be no longer than the time it takes the groom to make love ...(pause)...(Look at watch) oh, it looks like I’ve already gone about 30 seconds over…. Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you. (sit down)
In all seriousness folks…back to the job at hand, like I said my job today is to embarrass Graham. Now this is where my dilemma starts. It’s not that I don’t have any stories to tell, I’ve been best friends with Graham since we were in grade 7 so I’ve got tons of good stories. But I have a dilemma because: A: When I started writing down stories, most of them I had to edit, throw away, burn, or hand over to the police to help them with their enquiries. And what little that was left over may not be suitable for the dinner table, and B: Graham is going to be my best man one day and also has too much dirt on me!!
So I decided that I won’t tell any embarrassing stories…Nope, I’m not going to say anything. So I wont’ even mention all of those nights at 3am stealing garden gnomes off of peoples lawns or driving over people’s garbage cans in Graham’s Chevette.
Or how we got the bright idea one night of “borrowing” detour signs and pilons from a construction site and completely blocking off the entrance to our friend Jamie’s cul-de-sac.
And I probably shouldn’t tell you about the time that Graham lost the sunroof to his first car only a day or two after having it installed…how we were taking the car over some big jumps, and after one particular jump we looked up and noticed that the sky looked that much clearer, and then we realized that was because there was no sunroof in the way…it had flown off the car during the jump and was lying in a million pieces on the ground behind us. For months after that Graham drove around in his Chevette with a black garbage bag taped to the roof where the sunroof used to be.
And I surely won’t bring up the fact that Graham holds the eating record out of anyone I know, having eaten 7 Burger King burgers in the space of one hour. Incidentally, if anyone here didn’t get enough food to eat tonight, we all know who to blame for that.
And I’m sure that Graham would be completely embarrassed if I told you about what happened the one night several years ago that we both were working as cooks at Smitty’s restaurant. Graham got bored, so he decided to go and snoop around the attic in the restaurant to see what was up there. Well, he missed a step on one of the attic beams and ended up falling through the roof. And leave it to Graham to not only fall through the attic, but to fall through the attic and land in the boss’s office, right on top of his desk. Luckily, the boss wasn’t there, and we were able to call a friend in and patch the roof up, and Graham was able to live another day.
So I won’t mention any of these stories. So Graham, just remember when it comes time to talk about me one day, just remember how easy I went on you, and how I kept all those stories a secret okay?
One other thing I was told about the best man speech is that in my speech I should include somewhere how the bride has supposedly tamed the groom from his past youthful indiscretions and settled him down…and you know, in this case I think that is totally true. Jen has done a great job so far: as far as I know since Graham and Jen have been together Graham has yet to fall through a roof, block off a cul-de-sac, or smash any sunroofs. They are still working on his eating thing though.
In all seriousness, Graham has been a great friend to me and I’m very lucky that I’ve got to know Jenn over the last few years – and I just hope they know that I’ve always been extremely proud of both of them and honoured to call them my friends.Having got to know both of them I know they’ll always be happy together. And I look forward to the days well in the future when we all have kids and I can bring mine over to the Wood’s for a Barbecue and we can watch them play in the backyard together.
And so the last thing I was told about my best man speech is to finish it off with a quote. Someone has usually already said it, and probably said it better. So I will go out with the words of the philosopher Aristotle, who said simply "Love is a single soul inhabiting two bodies".
Graham and Jen....I wish you all the best on your journey together.
To Graham and Jen.
posted by Kwazer at 12:45 PM
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