The Role Of The Best Man In Weddings

By Author: Timothy Spencer
Total Articles: 112
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In the beginning, the ancient peoples lived in small tribes and nomadic in nature. Choosing a bride from within the confines of your own tribe often became a challenging feat so borders had to be crossed. Besides the often-short supply, maybe the familiarity also bred contempt.

Choosing a bride soon meant picking from greener pastures, which oftentimes would mean selecting one from another tribe. Capturing a bride would have to be done with the threat or actual use of force and violence and rarely would this be done alone.

So the groom's party would be filled with any number of men and the evolution of the Best man came along since all men were not created equal. The intelligent captain for such an expedition would call to action for the best fighter (or hunter) that the tribe could offer.

After her capture, the bride is also hidden from sight until the day of the wedding and the best man would also be the man charge of her safety and prevention from rescue or escape. This originally extended to standing at the bride side during the festivities but unfortunately lore says that many a best man became too ...
... close for comfort with bride. This caused his banishment forever to the groom side of the altar.

Other duties were set upon him as this tradition grew. The wedding rings were also put under his charge as well as the duty to help organize all the practices and since he also would have the most to say about the groom then he garnered the responsibility to carry out and lead the main toast with the delivery the best speech.

In addition to this, he would also provide moral support to groom for him to stay the course in case he got cold feet. Among all the other pre-wedding rituals the staging of the bachelor dinner or the stag party is also common and its roots could traced back to Spartan military tradition in the 5th century wherein comrades would gather on the eve of the grooms wedding and tell past tales of great adventures such as hunts and battles and also to continue to swear allegiance to each other in spite of his additional responsibilities as a married fellow. The reference to stag also referred to strength and virility as leader of the pack, and this evening deferred that honor to the groom. Even then this event would entail the consumption of innocuous amounts of alcohol and in the inebriation also caused solicitation to undress to female entertainers.

But to wrap up all the tall tales, the best man's duties and responsibilities during the wedding ceremony is to make sure that the groom arrives on the altar and properly dressed with the rose on his lapel and sober. He must also remember to sign on the marriage contract so he too must be sober. He also must aid the ushers in forming the entourage line and again must always remember to secure the rings. During the reception he can act as host and make the best toast and roast; and must dance with the bride and the matron of honor but most of all his presence and leadership ability must be present when closing down all the other details of the day to free the bride and groom from other troubles so they can set off to their honeymoon with glee.

The chance to be best man come rarely in a man's life so when this is tasked to you just remember that your responsibility is to act as the shadow of groom and tend to details as well as you the groom would like if the shoe were on the other foot.

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