We’ve been to plenty of weddings and know that wedding speeches can be anything from a post-lunch snooze to an absolute riot.

Throwing in a few well-timed jokes is vital for the best man and certainly helps for grooms, fathers of the bride and anyone else attempting to captivate the room. We thought we’d compile our favourite well-worn wedding jokes, almost more funny for how often they get rolled out.

Hooray indeed. If you’ve never heard any of these before then you might need to be concerned about how few weddings you’ve been invited to! See how many of your friends have dragged out these old classics to help them on their big day…

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In at number five an old favourite including those two essential wedding joke ingredients: gender stereotyping and mild misogyny:

No matter how many times a married man changes his job, he’ll still end up with the same boss.

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Slotting in at number four, the mother in law always gets a cheeky mention. Perhaps unwise to ruffle her feathers on day one but there we go:

I haven’t spoken to my mother in law for 18 months – I don’t like to interrupt her.

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Number three. A charming blend of weary cynicism and gentle humour. Sure to delight the bride:

A little boy asked his father, “Daddy, how much does it cost to get married?” The father replied, “I don’t know, son, I’m still paying for it.”

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Classic/terrible joke number two in our countdown wins its place for brevity. Quickfire laughs are important when your audience has just consumed half the bride’s family savings in food and wine:

My wife says I never listen. Or something like that.

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Ah, our numero uno. A classic dad-joke to provoke as may groans as chuckles. Jokes like this make the whole day worth it:

A man inserted an advert in the local classifieds: ‘Wife wanted’. Next day he received a hundred emails. They all said the same thing: “You can have mine.”

Brilliant! And terrible all at the same time… As well as these gnarly old-timers, we thought we’d throw in at least one great joke, plus a great resource we’ve found for wedding speeches.

thebestmanspeech.com is a brilliant way of piecing together the perfect speech. Specific pages for grooms, best men, fathers of the bride and brides make this site a fab resource! Let’s end with a favourite little example from them…

“The bride and groom have asked me to thank you for all your wonderful gifts. They can’t tell you how much they mean to them – but they should have a better idea after the honeymoon, once Paul’s spoken to the guy in the pawn shop.”

Splendid stuff. For more wedding inspiration and ideas do pop over to our highly social feeds on Instagram, Facebook (UK or Australia) and most especially that Pinterest one.