Short Best Man Speech for Best Friend: 3 Full Examples

Rhys and I have been best mates for twenty-four years, and he has trusted me with a great deal in that time. His house keys. His dog. His PIN, briefly, in 2014. Today he trusted me with this microphone, which I think we can all agree is the riskiest decision he has made yet.

I'm Owen. I grew up next door to Rhys on a cul-de-sac in Cardiff, close enough that we built a string-and-tin-can telephone between our bedroom windows and used it every single night to say nothing of any importance. Everything I'm about to tell you is true. Bethan made me promise.

When we were eleven, Rhys decided we needed a zipline between the big tree in his garden and the shed. He drew up plans. He costed it out in pocket money. He told both sets of parents it had, and I am quoting an eleven-year-old here, passed inspection. There was no inspection. There was a washing line and a lot of confidence. The maiden voyage launched me off the platform, snapped at the halfway point, and deposited me directly into Mrs Probert's rhubarb. Rhys's first words, before are you alright, before anything, were that the data was still useful.

That is the Rhys you get on a normal day. The man treats every disaster as a prototype. He once assembled a wardrobe so wrong it had a door where the back should be, looked at it for a while, and decided it was now a reading nook.

Growing up beside someone, though, you see the parts that never make it into the funny stories. Four years ago I was having a genuinely terrible run of things, the kind you do not talk about at a wedding, and Rhys noticed before I said a word. He started turning up on Thursdays with a takeaway and a stupid film, every Thursday, for the better part of a year. He never once asked me to explain myself. He just kept showing up until the Thursdays did their work. I have never thanked him for that properly, so I am doing it now, in front of two hundred people, where he is physically unable to change the subject.

Then Bethan came along. The first time Rhys brought her to the pub he was so keen to seem cultured that he ordered a red wine and then could not hide his face when he tasted it. Bethan watched him pretend to enjoy the whole glass. She leaned over to me and asked, quietly, does he actually like that. I said no. She nodded like a woman filing away evidence, and she has been two steps ahead of him ever since. He teaches Year 4. She is a head teacher. Make of that what you will.

Bethan, a brief safety briefing while there is time. He will describe every mistake as a learning experience, and he genuinely believes the wardrobe is a reading nook. Marry into that with your eyes open.

And one day, in your own back garden, he is going to tell your kids that the new zipline has absolutely passed inspection. Do me a favour. Check it yourselves.

Rhys. Twenty-four years, and the best thing your parents ever did was move in next door.

Everyone, on your feet and raise a glass. To Rhys and Bethan.

I met Andre in third grade at the bus stop on Maple Street, where he was selling the other kids cinnamon toast out of a backpack for a quarter a slice. I bought three. I have never stopped paying that man money, and somehow I keep coming back.

I'm Hector. I'm a chef now, which Andre takes full credit for, and I have been his best friend for twenty-six years.

Every friendship has the one story that explains the whole person. Ours is the lemonade summer. We were twelve. Most kids set up a stand. Andre set up three. He had one outside the hardware store, one near the ball fields, and one he made me run by the church on Sundays. He printed loyalty cards. Buy nine, get the tenth free, except the tenth cup was deliberately smaller, and when I pointed that out he told me I clearly did not understand margins. He was twelve and he was not wrong. By August he had cleared enough to buy a bike, and I had a sunburn and a job I never applied for.

That is the Andre most of you know. The closer. The guy who negotiates the price of a car like it personally offended him, who reads the entire menu out loud and then asks the waiter what they would order anyway. He runs a logistics company now, and half the trucks on the freeway this morning probably answer to him.

Here is the Andre I know. Two years ago a grease fire took out my kitchen and very nearly took out the restaurant with it. I was standing in the parking lot at two in the morning watching my whole life smoke when my phone rang. Andre, already driving over, asking one question. What do you need by Monday. He did not say it would be okay. He showed up with a clipboard and a contractor's number and a folding table, and he spent the next three weekends helping me rebuild a kitchen he does not even know how to cook in. He has never once brought it up since. I am only telling you because the fire department wrote a report and Andre never wrote anything down, and somebody in this room should know what he did.

Then Joy walked in. They met when her firm did the structural inspection on his new warehouse, and she failed it. Andre called me that night, completely thrown, because a woman had looked at his numbers and told him they were wrong and she had the math to prove it. He had finally met someone he could not out-talk. Within a month she could read him better than I could after two decades. She knows his real laugh from the one he uses with clients. I was going to teach her all of that. She had already taken notes.

Joy, you are an engineer, so you will appreciate this. I have watched a lot of people meet Andre and try to keep up. You are the first one who simply did not have to.

Andre. One backpack of cinnamon toast, twenty-six years ago, and I am still the best customer you ever had.

Everybody, please stand and raise your glasses. To Andre and Joy.

Dave and I met in the first week of primary school in Perth, when he copied my spelling test so closely he also copied my name at the top. We both got a zero. Thirty years later he asked me to be his best man, so clearly neither of us has learned a thing.

I'm Pete. I put up fences for a living, Dave's a physio, and between us we have one good back left.

To understand Dave, you have to hear about Kevin. Kevin was a magpie. One spring about six years ago, a magpie started turning up on Dave's back fence, and instead of doing what any normal person does, which is nothing, Dave named him Kevin and began putting out mince. Within a fortnight Kevin had a routine. Within a month Kevin had opinions. Dave would be on the phone to me and I'd hear him stop mid-sentence to tell Kevin the mince was coming, mate, settle down. He defended that bird to anyone who would listen. When Kevin swooped the postie, Dave's position was that the postie had it coming.

That is Dave all over. He decides something is his to look after, and then it simply is, no further discussion. He still talks about Kevin in the present tense, and none of us has the heart to ask.

Here is the part that does not make the group chat. Three years ago my marriage came apart, quietly and badly, and I went a bit quiet with it. Dave noticed before I told him. He drove four hours up the coast to where I was working, turned up at the site with a slab and a swag, and stayed the weekend. He did not make me talk. We sat by a fire and he let me say nothing for a very long time, and then he drove all the way back for a Monday shift. He has never mentioned it since. I am mentioning it now because he cannot stop me, and because a bloke should hear this stuff out loud at least once.

Then Steph came along. They met because Dave brought a dog into her vet clinic that was not even his, a stray he had found limping near the oval and could not leave. Steph told me later she knew exactly what kind of man she was dealing with the moment a grown adult teared up over a dog he had owned for forty minutes. She married him anyway. She is braver than she looks.

Steph, in the interest of full disclosure. This is a man who fed a wild bird for an entire spring and considered it a friendship. The loyalty heading your way does not switch off, and it does not listen to reason. You have been warned, and I think you already know.

Dave. Thirty years, and you have never once let me carry the heavy end of anything, on a job or otherwise. Today is the first time you have let me stand up here and say so.

Ladies and gentlemen, charge your glasses. To Dave and Steph. And wherever he is tonight, to Kevin.