The Best Man is an important person at any wedding and the Best Man's Speech should be one of the high spots of any wedding reception. Being invited to be Best Man is a tremendous honor and the Best Man should repay the compliment by giving a stunning Best Man Speech. There are a few individuals who can stand up and make a fluent and entertaining impromptu speech at a moment's notice, but speech making does not come naturally to most people. Indeed, for many men, making a Best Man Speech will be their first experience of public speaking. Being asked to stand as Best Man is a wonderful thing but giving a Best Man speech can be a scary experience even for a normally confident person.

So, if you are just an ordinary guy, who has never made a speech to a crowd of people and is not at all comfortable with the idea of doing so and hasn't the first idea of how to write a Best Man Speech, where do you start?

The answer is that you need to get organised and get help. Being Best Man carries a lot of responsibility and, in order to fulfil these responsibilities and make everything run to plan at the wedding service and reception, the Best Man needs to get organised well in advance of the Big Day. Getting the speech writing done early will relieve some of the pressure and leave the Best Man free to concentrate on preparing for his other duties.

What could be worse than having to stand up and make a speech in front of a room full of people, some of whom you've never met before?

The answer is standing up in front of those people as Best Man for the first time in your life and not having a pre-prepared speech.

The Best Man Speech is something that can (and should) be prepared well in advance of the Wedding Day. The Best Man should give himself plenty of time to write his speech, practise the speech (out loud) and become comfortable with the whole idea of making a speech in front of a large number of people. If you are a first time speech-maker or not adept at writing, you can get help with writing a Best Man Speech from a specialised speech writing book.

The actual time a Best Man will need to write a speech will, of course, depend on his writing capabilities and a good speech will almost certainly need a couple of re-drafts to polish it up. For a Best Man who is really not confident in his ability to put his thoughts down on paper, the best plan is to make a "things to say" list of topics and anecdotes to amuse the Wedding guests. Then either enlist the help of a friend who is good at creative writing or use a template Best Man Speech as a guide to organise the anecdotes etc into a speech that will flow in a professional way as well as sounding warm and personal.

No Best Man worthy of the title should try to get away with leaving the writing of this important speech to the last minute and then copying someone else's Best Man Speech and just changing the names of the parties. Doing that would result in the Best Man Speech sounding stilted and impersonal. Without your input of ideas and unique personal anecdotes, the speech will be boring to the wedding guests. If you are given the honor of being chosen as Best Man, respect for the Bride and Groom demands that you must deliver the greatest Best Man speech you can manage and your first step is learning how to write a Best Man Speech.