Funny Best Man Speech for a Best Friend: 3 Full Examples

Evening, all. I'm Owen. The groom asked me to keep it warm, keep it clean and not mention the car wash. I can promise you one of those.

Gareth and I met in Year 7, in detention, on the same afternoon, for the same offence, which neither of us committed. We were both there because a boy named Lee Pritchard set off the fire alarm and then pointed at the two lads nearest the door. So the friendship started with a shared injustice, and I want it on record that we never did get our apology.

What you need to understand about Gareth is that he has ideas. Big ones. Confident ones. Roughly none of them survive contact with reality, but he commits to each one like it's the moon landing. When we were fifteen he decided we'd start a mobile car wash. Two buckets, a sponge, a hosepipe his dad didn't know about. He printed flyers. He gave it a name. He called it Gleam Team, which I thought was ambitious for two boys and a leaking hose.

We washed four cars. The fifth belonged to Mrs Howells two doors down, and Gareth, full of confidence, used the wrong stuff on the paint and took the shine clean off her wing mirror. He spent his half of the profits putting it right and still talks about Gleam Team like it was a tech startup we sold too early. He kept a flyer. He showed it to me last month. The phone number on it was his mum's landline.

That's the thing with Gareth. He is all the way in, every time, however daft it looks from where the rest of us are standing. He learned the trombone for one school concert and then never played it again. He once queued six hours for a chip shop that had been on the telly. So the morning after he met Bethan, when he rang me and said, very quietly, I think that's the one, I laughed at him. He did not laugh back. And here we all are.

Now, I should say something about Bethan, since she is the reason I'm in a suit that doesn't breathe. Bethan, the first night Gareth brought you to the rugby club, you corrected his account of a game he'd watched and you were right and he knew it. I have never seen the man recover so fast and so badly at the same time.

And here's a thing I've never said out loud, because we don't do this. A couple of winters back I was working nights and falling apart a bit, not coping, not telling anyone. Gareth turned up at mine every Friday with a curry and a stack of rubbish films and he never once made it a thing. You learn who your people are in a hard stretch. I already knew, but he proved it anyway.

The Gareth that exists since Bethan is the best version yet. Calmer. Kinder. He owns a plant that is still alive, which for him is basically a degree.

Gareth, you're the brother I was lucky enough to get in a detention, and I'd choose you sober and on purpose. Bethan, you're one of us now, and we are thrilled and a little bit sorry.

Everyone, please be upstanding and raise your glasses. To Gareth and Bethan. May every idea you two have from here turn out better than Gleam Team.

Evening, everybody. I'm Wes. I grew up in the house right next to Cody's, close enough that for about ten years our two backyards were basically one country with no border and no rules.

We met when we were seven, when Cody climbed the fence between our yards to tell me, a total stranger, that my sprinkler was set up wrong. He was right. He's been right at people ever since, and tonight Maya gets him full time, so good luck to her and to that sprinkler.

Here's what you should know about Cody. The man has never once met a problem he didn't think he could engineer his way out of with stuff from the garage. When we were eleven he decided our yards needed a zip line. He found an old clothesline cable, ran it from his treehouse to my dad's oak, and tested the whole thing by sending his little brother down it first. For science. The cable held. The branch did not. His brother landed in a kiddie pool, completely fine, slightly famous on our street for a summer.

Cody kept that cable in his garage for fifteen years. He showed it to me at his bachelor party like it was a war medal, and he still maintains the design was sound and the tree was the weak link. He says that about a lot of things. The plan was good, the tree let us down.

That's Cody all over. Once he's decided on something he is all in, no half measures, no off switch. He taught himself to weld off the internet. He drove nine hours to see a band he'd liked since he was a kid and called me from the parking lot just to say the drums sounded incredible. So when he called me the week he met Maya and went quiet on the phone, I knew before he said a word. He just said, man, I think I'm in trouble here. Good trouble.

Maya, I have to talk about you for a second, because you walked into this and changed it. You out-argued him about the best route across town inside a week, and he took the long way home just to prove a point and got there after you anyway. The man would rather be late than wrong, and you've already got him being both with a smile on his face.

And I'll tell you something I don't say easy. When my dad passed two years back, I went pretty quiet and pulled away from everybody. Cody just started showing up. He mowed my mom's lawn every Sunday the whole summer and never made a thing of it, and if you bring it up to him now he changes the subject to the Cowboys. The loudest guy I know did the quietest, kindest thing I've seen anyone do.

The Cody who exists since Maya is calmer, steadier, happier. He looks at her the way the rest of us look at a long weekend with good weather coming.

Cody, you've been my best friend since you climbed that fence, and I'd pick you all over again. Maya, you got the best one we had, and he knows it.

Everybody, please stand and raise your glasses. To Cody and Maya. May every line you two rig up hold, and may the landing always be soft.

Kia ora, everyone. I'm Noah. Liam and I have been mates since we were eight, and I've spent most of the years since being his second-in-command in schemes I never agreed to join.

We met on a paper round. Well, his paper round. Liam had talked the local dairy into giving him the route, then talked me into doing half of it for, and I quote, exposure. I was eight. I did not know what exposure was. I delivered papers in the rain for a year and got paid in his leftover lollies, and somehow I'm the one who feels lucky tonight.

The thing about Liam is the confidence arrives years before the ability, if the ability turns up at all. He once entered the school talent show to do magic, having learned exactly one trick, badly, off a video the night before. He got up there, fumbled it in front of the entire hall, and took a full bow like he'd pulled off something historic. I teach PE now and I tell my students that story, and they do not believe a person like that is real.

When we were twelve Liam decided the paper round wasn't enough, so we were going into mini golf. He built a course across his whole back lawn out of hoses, planks and one of his mum's good salad bowls. He charged the neighbourhood kids two dollars a round. It was, genuinely, terrible. Hole four was just a hose with ambition. But he ran that lawn like a championship for an entire summer, and his mum only shut it down when she found the salad bowl had a golf ball wedged in it for keeps. He still has the scorecards. He showed me one this morning. My name is on it under unpaid staff.

That's Liam. Once he's in, he's all the way in. So when he rang me the week he met Tegan, talking faster than I'd ever heard him, I knew. He said, I've met someone and I think this is it, and for once the confidence and the reality were in the same place at the same time.

Tegan, you need to know what you've taken on, but you also need to know the good part. You beat him at his own pub quiz the night you met, on his specialist round, and he came home and told me he'd finally met someone smarter than him, like it was a discovery and not the obvious thing the rest of us had known for years.

And here's the bit I actually came to say. When my old man got crook a couple of winters back, Liam drove down the line every single weekend with a chilly bin full of food and a load of useless opinions about the cricket, and he never once made it heavy. The loudest mate I've got did the kindest thing I've seen, and he did it so quietly you'd have missed it.

Liam, you've been my best mate for thirty years and the best teammate I never picked. Tegan, you got the good one, and the rare thing is he agrees.

Righto, everyone, on your feet and glasses up. To Liam and Tegan. May the two of you always be worth more than two dollars a round.