Best man speech examples you can actually steal from.

Leo keeps a spreadsheet called "grocery patterns." I'll come back to that. First — welcome, thank you for being here, and Hannah's parents, I hope you know what you're in for. I met Leo at the swimming pool the summer before fifth grade. He was the kid who kept trying to teach the lifeguards how to do their jobs. One of them — her name was Stacey, and I remember it because Leo remembered it — finally told him to please stop. Leo, without blinking, said, "I'm only trying to help." He was nine years old. That sentence, I've come to realize, is the thesis of his life. For twenty-three years, Leo has tried to help. He helped me study for the SATs. He helped me pick a college. He helped me not marry someone I shouldn't have. He has moved me, three separate times, once in a snowstorm. He has never once charged me for it, and he has reminded me about it exactly zero times. Last February, my mom had surgery. It wasn't scheduled to be serious, and then it was. I got the call at work and started driving home. Forty-five minutes in, Leo called and said he was already at the hospital. I asked how. He said he'd heard something off in my voice on a text thread the night before — a thread where I hadn't actually said anything was wrong, because nothing yet was wrong — and he'd been keeping an eye on things. He sat with her until I got there. He brought a book. He didn't read it. That's Leo. He reads the room before you know it's a room. Now — Hannah. I knew Hannah was different the first time Leo talked about her, because he didn't brag. Leo brags. It's one of his bad habits. But about Hannah, he said, "She knows things I don't know," and he said it the way you say something that's been bothering you in a good way. Here's the thing about Hannah. She is the reason Leo stopped opening Google Docs at 11 p.m. on Sundays to plan out his week. She is the reason he took a real vacation — not a "work from a nicer location" vacation — for the first time since 2019. She is the reason he now laughs when something is funny, instead of explaining why it's funny. Hannah, whatever you did to him, thank you. Leo, you spent twenty-three years noticing everyone else. You finally found someone who noticed you back. That's the whole arc. Raise your glasses. To Leo and Hannah.

Dev once tried to fight a goose. I should give you more context than that. We were at a park in Madison, Wisconsin. October 2017. And a goose was, by Dev's assessment, "being disrespectful." Dev is five-foot-seven. The goose was a goose. Dev crouched down. Put his arms out. And — I want to be clear about this — began a tactical approach. I said, "Dev." He said, "Raj, this is between us." Ladies and gentlemen, that is my best friend, and somehow Katie Park — anesthesiologist, speaks three languages, has never lost anything — has agreed to marry him. Dev and I have been friends since we were fourteen. He is the reason I got arrested for skateboarding in a parking garage in 2009. He is also the reason the charges were dropped, because Dev showed up at the precinct with — I am still not sure how — a notarized letter from the property owner. That's Dev. He will cause the problem and also, somehow, already be writing the appeal. When Dev first mentioned Katie, I was not optimistic. Dev's dating history includes a woman who trained dolphins, a woman he met at a DMV, and someone named Brooke who was in the middle of joining a band. But then he said, "Raj, this one — I don't know, she laughs at me." Not with me, he said. At me. And I said, "Dev, that's because you're funny." He said, "No, specifically, like, she'll look at me and laugh like I'm a fool." He said it like a man who had finally, finally found the correct response to himself. Katie. I would like to thank you. You took a man who owned, at age thirty-two, a single bath towel — one large beach towel — and got him into a real towel set, with colors, and a coordinating hand towel. Raise your glasses. To Dev and Katie. And to the goose, who never pressed charges.

Before I start — Tyler, I want you to know I ran this speech past three people. Your mom asked me to cut the part about the raccoon. Your sister said to leave it in. Nicole said, "Whatever makes it shorter." This is the version you're getting. Tyler and I have been best friends for twelve years. In that time, I've watched him start three companies. I've watched him end three companies. I've watched him, at a farm in Vermont, attempt to explain to a cow — with real hand gestures — why the cow should move. Tyler is a man of big ideas and small follow-through. Last year, he told me he was going to learn the violin. He ordered a violin. He named the violin. The violin lives in his closet. The violin has a name. It's Walter. For a long time, Tyler's approach to dating was similarly ambitious and similarly shelved. There was the woman in Austin he dated for three weeks and then ghosted because she "used the wrong kind of soap." There was the woman in New York he refused to date because she was taller than him by — and I want to be exact — half an inch. And then he met Nicole. The first sign something was different: he texted me about her three times in one day. Tyler does not text three times in one day. Tyler texts once a week, in caps, usually about soccer. The second sign: he canceled a bachelor trip — his own bachelor trip from a year before, for a different wedding — to be at her friend's birthday. Nicole. I want to formally apologize. I don't know what he told you about himself, but I promise you at least half of it is a version of his life he's been workshopping since 2019. I say this as the man who loves him most: you've saved him. Tyler — you idiot. I'm proud of you. Nicole — you're stuck with him, and on behalf of everyone who's been stuck with him longer, you're doing great. Raise your glasses. To Tyler and Nicole. And to Walter the violin, who will probably never be played.