A Guide To Picking Your Groomsmen

Picking the groomsmen for your wedding can be one of the most awkward social issues a grown man will ever face that doesn’t involve your daughter’s teenage friends in bikinis. It’s the only time as an adult that you’re forced to draw a line in the sand and explicitly state, “some of you are over here, the rest of you are over here.” But you’re getting married, which means you’re now a real adult who needs to make real decisions, so quit drawing in the sand like a goddamn toddler, and man up.

It’s an uncomfortable situation; feelings can get hurt from those who once considered themselves part of your inner circle. By leaving them out of the groomsmen selection, it’s a not-so-subtle way of telling them that they are nothing more than trash to you, and they should be lucky to hold your dick while you pee during the wedding. Then you spit in their face and tell them to beg for their mommy. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

How does one actually go about selecting their groomsmen? Not the gimmes – brothers, cousins, brothers-in-law, etc. I’m talking strictly in terms of the friend group. Do you hit shuffle on your Facebook? Conduct a Hunger Games style competition between the contenders? Kill yourself? The whole thing is enough to drive a person to cheat on their fiancee to sabotage the nuptials.

To help you traverse the rocky hills of groomsmen selection, I’ve taken the guesswork out of it for you, by compiling the guide below. Following this guide will help ensure that you’re flanked by the top of the top, who will surely make your wedding, a day to remember (or forget, as sadly, Alzheimer’s is expected to affect 1 in nearly 85 people globally by 2050).

Please Note: This is an article directed at people with a large group of friends. If you are a big loser with a lack of friends, go back to your WoW guild, you friendless weirdo. 

1. Calculate Which Friends Have The Highest Earning Potential – By the time you’re getting married, you’ve surely started to get a sense as to which of your friends will become professional failures. Why waste such a special gift of groomsmanhood on poor people who won’t be able to help you later in your life? Determine which of your friends could potentially a) have a yacht, b) become famous, c) take you on lavish vacations, d) have a private plane. By making them your groomsman, they will feel like they owe you, and take you along for their lavish ride.

2. Leave Out Everyone Who Is Super Good Looking – It doesn’t matter how close you are with someone, if they’re going to take the attention away from you, they are not worth having in your lineup. All eyes should be on you. You don’t want some smokeshow dude flashing his pearly whites and making all the girls giddy. F that noise.

3. Choose One Fat Friend – This serves a dual purpose. Just like having a good-looking friend will make you look grosser by comparison, having a big fat slob standing next to you will make you seem skinnier and more put-together. Additionally, he will probably compensate for his low self-esteem by doing wacky stuff like splitting his pants doing a cartwheel on the dance floor. That’ll give everyone a good chuckle.

4. Punish Someone For Something Petty and Long Forgotten – While you have the power to reward via your groomsmen selection, you also have the power to spurn. This is your time to get back at a friend for whatever petty, trivial, perceived slight has haunted you over the years. Oh, Greg Lipton, you think we’re super close? You not inviting me up to your country house four years ago would lead me to believe otherwise. Boom – NOT A GROOMSMAN.

5. Choose A Friend Who Is A Good Speaker – In most cases, groomsmen will give a speech at the rehearsal dinner. You don’t want every person in your crew to be some blacked out frat guy who can’t string together a coherent sentence. Even if you’re not that close with Brody Davis, give him a nod into the wedding party and you’ve ensured yourself a beautiful and heartfelt speech that will make you seem like a good guy.

6. Choose At Least One Diverse Friend – In trotting out your best friends, this is everyone’s chance to get a complete picture about who you surround yourself with. Are you trying to look like a wedding party, or an Aryan Nation barbecue? Try to include a gay, a Jew, a black, a Hispanic, an Asian, and someone with a not-distractingly-gross disability. If these people do not exist in your group because you actually are a bigoted piece of shit, see if you can rent from the venue.

7. Determine Who Has Info From The Bachelor Party That Could Be Used Against You – Hell hath no fury, like a bro friend scorned. You might’ve gotten back at Greg Lipton for the country house non-invite, but guess what, Greg Lipton was there in Montreal when you got j’d off by the French-Canadian tranny. If he feels particularly slighted by the diss, he might get a little gossipy with some of the ladies at the wedding. This is certainly something you don’t need as you start the next chapter of your life.

8. Figure Out Who Is In Dire Need Of A Status Boost – Not everything with the groomsmen selection is about you. By elevating someone’s status to groomsmen, you immediately make them a more visible and desirable figure at the wedding. Girls will take notice. “Wow, if this guy is close enough with the groom such that he was selected as a groomsman, I can only imagine what a tender lover he is in bed.” If you have a single friend who just went through a messy breakup, granting him groomsman status would be the benevolent thing to do.

9. Make Sure Not To Include “The Funny Guy” – When you include “The Funny Guy” in the wedding party, he doesn’t look at this so much as an act of bro love, but rather an invitation to Last Comic Standing. He will use the rehearsal dinner as an opportunity to make a funny speech that will likely just be offensive and out you as the perv you actually are. This is your day; this isn’t an opportunity for your friend to test out his set like he’s at open mic night at The Funny Bone. Sideline this Chris Kataan wannabe.

10. Throw Your Mom A Bone – Your wedding is just as much a celebration for your parents as it is for you. Let them share in the joy by extending an invite to your mom’s best friend’s son, who you grew up with, and think is a total weirdo, but you know it would mean a lot to your mom if you included him. Just make sure to explain to him that if he so much as makes eye contact with you at the wedding, you will demote him to valet so fast it’ll make his zits pop.