Editor of Speechwriter's Newsletter agonizes over best-man toast

At the end of an otherwise innocuous e-mail about a wedding I'm in in Cleveland on Friday, a Canadian speechwriter who I correspond with asked a question that pierced me: "Have you prepared your best man speech?"

I think it was the word "prepared" that really got me. "Written" wouldn't have done it. "Prepared," for some reason … that got the sweat flowing.

So I poured my heart out to him:

"This is proving to be a terribly tough assignment. This is my best friend in the world. But there is absolutely nothing I have not said to him or he to me. To me, toasts work best when the giver says one extra thing that's never been said before in the relationship, and says it in front of God and family and everybody. That thing doesn't exist between us, for we have been drunk too often together."

I added that the audience is a tough one: "A gang of blue-collar Clevelanders --witty, funny, wise blue-collar Clevelanders."

Which meant Walt Whitman was out. ("We two boys together clinging … One the other never leaving, Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making …" Uh huh.)

My correspondent replied: "I have no advice to give except that remember you and your best friend may have said/heard it all before--but presumably those in the wedding party haven't --or not all of them--and certainly not at the same time. And even if they had--it is the saying of the familiar out loud--the public witness --that gives whatever you have to say its extra meaning."

Is my correspondent right? I'll find out the hard way, and I'll report back next week.

Wish me luck, bloggees.

(Did I just invent that awful term?)