How long should a best man speech be?

5 to 7 minutes. That's it. That's the answer.

The reason isn't tradition or pedantry — it's attention. By minute eight, the warmest, most well-fed wedding crowd starts to wobble. They want to laugh, applaud, and get back to the bar. Land in the 5–7 minute window and you'll get the room you wanted; overstay and you'll fight for it.

People speak at about 130 words per minute under wedding conditions — slower than a podcast, faster than a eulogy. After pauses and laughs:

• 3 minutes — around 400 words. Tight but possible if you have one killer story.
• 5 minutes — around 650 words. The honest floor for a "complete" speech.
• 6 minutes — around 780 words. The sweet spot.
• 7 minutes — around 900 words. The natural ceiling.
• 8+ minutes — past 1,000 words. You're almost certainly padding.

Three reasons:

• Laughter math. Every solid laugh costs you 5–10 seconds. A 10-minute draft becomes a 12-minute speech.
• Memory load. You're nervous. Your delivery slows. Pauses lengthen. Whatever you wrote, add 15%.
• The other speakers. The room has already sat through father of the bride and groom. By the time you're up, they've been listening for 15+ minutes.

• Read it out loud, on your feet. Not in your head. Standing changes your pace.
• Time the whole thing. Include pauses where laughs would land.
• Add 15%. Whatever your home timing is, the wedding version will be slower.
• Print cue cards. Reading from a phone speeds you up and flattens delivery.

If your speech is over 1,000 words, the answer is always to cut, never to speed up. Cut in this order:

• Your weakest story (you know which one).
• The shoutout list. One name beats five.
• The "for those of you who don't know me" line. Don't open with admin.
• The second internet joke.
• Anything that doesn't say something about this groom that nobody else could have said.

Keep: your single best image, the one true thing about him, and the toast. Everything else is optional.