Being the best man at a friend’s wedding can be one of the paramount moments of your life, solidifying the gratitude you feel for your friendship. However it is a tricky day laden with many hazards and potential blunders. Though only the truly hopeless and insincere will cause a noticeable damper on a wedding day, as a best man you should make it your obligation to ensure that your friend and their betrothed are sent off into the world of married life with all the respect and grace you can muster. Consider yourself in charge of making sure that you do not create a wedding disaster. In this light, it is important to discuss a potential strategy for that most important of best man obligations: the speech.

A perpetual possibility for wedding disaster and bride anxiety, the speech by the best man seems intended to cause awkwardness and adversity. Faced with relatives and friends of friends, most best men will be up against a crowd that is filled with unrecognizable acquaintances with nothing better to do than judge and criticize even the most prepared of speech writers. This fact is the first key to preparing a disaster-free best man speech: know your audience. Like old Socrates, the best frame of mind when presented with a room full of well-dressed critics, is to "know that you know nothing." Do not pretend to have special insights to the success or failure of the bride or groom, do not assume that there is a shared sense of humor among all people present, and never make the mistake of thinking that people are interested in you as the best man. Truthfully, the most interesting thing that you can do at a wedding is create a disaster; interesting for some, miserable for you and the people you will want to please. Know your audience. Know that they may not be actively wishing for you to be a wedding disaster, but keep in mind that you don’t know that they aren’t in fact hoping for that disaster to happen. Like a belly-flop off of a diving board, some minor pain is simply too entertaining for passive onlookers to ignore.

This brings us to our second key: play your dialogue defensively. Once you have internalized that the people you will be speaking to do not necessarily wish you to be funny or entertaining, you should then remove the burden of proving something to yourself. Do not feel that you need to make a good impression or that you should take advantage of your opportunity and crack jokes or get sincere with a group of people you have never met, because it will likely end in disaster. Though it is not a certainty that telling a few jokes or being honest will cause problems, it is certain that if you play your speech defensively and say only what you need to say, you will be appreciated for not overstepping your boundaries and causing a wedding disaster.

Thirdly, keep your speech as short as possible. Most speeches run overtime, this is human nature. To correct for this mistake, plan a speech that is no longer than four minutes long, time yourself, and rehearse reading it at least twice before your actual performance. This way, you should definitely be able to keep your address under seven minutes, which is about the threshold for anyone’s tolerance of a best man.

As the best man it is your obligation to put up with the stress and the minor injustices of a room of potentially hostile guests watching for any false moves. Consider yourself the distraction, the red herring. Your presence as a target of criticism removes stress from the bride and groom on their big day. So, take the pressure, weather the storm and keep your words short and simple. As best man, it may not be much, but keeping your speech simple may be the best thing you can do to keep your friend’s wedding away from disaster territory.