Best Man Ideas, Tips & Advice

Top Seven - best man ideas, tips & advice

Has your mate has done you the honour of asking you to be his best man? Well now you should do HIM the honour of doing the job well. But the problem with a once (or perhaps twice) in a lifetime task, is that its hard to find anyone who knows what to do. How can you develop expertise around something that is, by definition, a rare experience? Well the answer is: you can’t…or at least its very rare to find someone who IS an expert (though we did manage to interview one!). That’s why we’ve decided to collect top best man ideas, best man tips, and best man advice all on one page - we hope it will be a guide to good best man behaviour (including the Budapest stag do of course!).

The best way to think of our best man ideas is not simple ‘expertise’ but rather a common sense list of the Seven things you should, or shouldn’t do as a best man. Obviously you need to follow them all to the letter. But we hope this collective wisdom should help you on your way to being the best best man you can be!

1. Be around

This is the best, best man advice we can offer. It is the foundation for all other pieces of advice. Someone once said that 90% of success is turning up, well 99% of being a good best man is being around. That means you don’t just clear off on a three month tour of the Indies just before the stag do. And it also means that when you get a Facebook message or a text from the groom, you don’t simply turn the phone off and ignore it. You need to be there if he has questions, problems, last minute panics…all of that. Even if you give terrible advice your presence will be reassuring.

2. Steer the Ship

This is a simple piece of best man advice: you need to be the captain of the ship. Even though it’s his big day, and his stag weekend – you will need to show leadership skills. Firstly you’ll have to organise the the stag do itself – in Prague or any other city. Then while on the stag you should be the guy who knows what’s going to happen next. Not the guy who staggers around in the square of some foreign city, can of lager in hand, asking ’where are we going now lads?’. It should be the stag whose letting himself go wild, not you (or at least until everyone is three sheets to the wind).

3. Think of the Bride

This applies before, during and after the stag weekend. You need to try to get in the bride’s good books. There are ways and ways of doing this. The easiest is to agree with her suggestions more than his – but a better way is to show her you’re a sensible chap. But what if you’re considered a ‘bad influence’ on your mate? Well now’s you’re chance to show her she was wrong. That means acting as a mediator between them, when it comes to plans, and making sure the stag does not do anything he might regret…or worse anything bad stories that could get back to bride.

4. The Voice of Reason

This is important when you’re on the stag do: you’ll need to be the cool, calm and collective one. We’re not suggesting you become a killjoy. But you should have an idea of what the ‘line’ is. That means if the lads have a stag prank in mind that could go horribly wrong, then you should be the sensible one and reason them out of it. There are plenty of stag do horror stories out there – from heart attacks, to third-degree burns – you just don’t need to add to them.

5. Preparation, Preparation

This is crucial one on our list of best man ideas: preparation. Preparation is all. We have plenty of best man advice regarding preparing the speech, but preparation is much more than just rehearing your lines. Essentially the best advice we can give here is to make sure you are prepared for anything. That means – be a pessimist. Assume that something will go wrong. That there will be problems with transport to the church, that the ring will get lost, that you will be heckled during the speech by a drunk uncle…and on and on. Make sure you have contingency plans and an idea of what to do if something goes wrong.

6. Work the Room

This is one best man tips that you can apply when you’re crafting the speech AND when you’re done giving the speech, and are ready to get down and party. Working the room simply means think about the people – friends, family – who aren’t your mates. That means a big no-no to inside jokes that only make sense if you were at Glastonbury 2002, or sat in the back row of Mr. Brown’s maths class. Unless you can explain the joke, leave it out. It also applies to things that might cause offence, or no be appropriate for young ears.

Also after the speech is done you should be open to chatting, and hanging out with more than just your friends. If you work the room a bit, it will do wonders for your future relations with the bride…especially when you want to him to come on another lads weekend in the future.

7. Check your ‘Alpha’ Behaviour

This is the kind of advice that those men’s rights activist weirdos don’t want you to hear. There is a time and a place for being – or pretending to be – ‘alpha’, and now is not one of them. Even if you think you’re more of wise-cracking, heavy lifting, manly specimen than the groom, keep that to yourself during the stag trip and the wedding. Remember this isn’t about you bossing everyone around, or humiliating the groom. Check yourself before you wreck yourself, as that rap song goes, and don’t try to steal the spotlight. It’s your mate’s big day, not yours.

Thanks for reading our top 7 best man ideas, tips & advice. Want to book a stag weekend? Get in touch and we can organise an amazing last weekend of freedom in one of our 20+ destinations.