What actually makes a best man or maid of honor speech good, beyond just being funny

Wedding speeches get written under the pressure to be funny above all else, which sometimes produces a speech that gets laughs in the room and is forgotten by the next morning. The speeches guests actually remember tend to have something else going on underneath the jokes.

A real story beats a list of jokes

One well-told, specific story about the couple, ideally one that reveals something true about who they are together, lands harder and stays with people longer than a string of loosely connected jokes with no throughline.

Roast lightly, if at all

A little gentle teasing is fine and often expected. A speech that leans heavily into embarrassing stories, especially anything involving an ex or something the couple might not want retold in front of family, tends to land worse than the speaker anticipated, however funny it felt in the writing.

Address the room, not just the couple

The couple already knows the story, in a sense the speech is really for the room, giving guests (many of whom may not know the couple well) a genuine sense of who they are and why the people closest to them care so much. That's what makes a speech feel meaningful to everyone in the room, not just the two people it's about.

Practice it out loud, more than once

A speech that reads well on paper doesn't always land the same way spoken aloud to a room. Reading it out loud, ideally to at least one other person beforehand, catches awkward phrasing and timing issues that are invisible on the page.