The Ultimate Best Man Duties: Essential Checklist and Guide

Speech Or Toast?

You're wondering whether the best man speech and toast are the same things?

You're stressing out because you know you have to write this speech for your best friend and then you have all these difficult questions to answer!

Not only do you not know your wedding toast from your wedding speech but are you supposed to propose a toast to the bridesmaids or are you supposed to toast the bride and groom?

Do you really care? Why is this all so hard!!

Relax, in the end it doesn't really matter whether you get these finer details right - what matters is that you stand up and give your best man speech from the heart (well pretty much from the heart with a few copied jokes.)

Are They The Same?

It has always been my understanding that a best man speech and toast are two different things. The toast is a subset of the best man wedding speech and is proposed by you, the best man. The best man speech is the overall speech. Get it?

Maybe this little diagram will help explain where the best man toast fits into the whole best man speech.

Who Is The Toast For?

From memory, I think that traditional etiquette dictates that in the speech, a best man wedding toast should be proposed to the bridesmaids. The best man is supposed to tell the bridesmaids how beautiful they look and compliment them on what great friends they have been to the bride.

However, when I write my speeches I always tell the bride how beautful she looks (I never worry about the bridesmaids - it's not their day) and then at the end I write a short and sincere toast for the best man to propose. It's actually a great way to end the speech and if you pick the right sentiment, you can have the wedding guests shedding a tear or two!

So that's my advice but I've never been a traditionalist and I figure that it's the bride and grooms day - why not propose wedding toasts to them as much as you can.

Remember

There is one thing you have to remember - a best man wedding toast ends in everyone raising their glasses and repeating "to the bride and groom" or "to the bridesmaids".