Speeches / Toasts - are they necessary at the reception?

I've been to weddings both with and without them, and they're definitely not required! I never miss them when they're not there.

I was super drunk at my good friends' wedding and they had an open mic for toasts; when our mutual friend asked me if I wanted to give a toast with her, I told her that I would be happy to do an interpretive dance to her toast if she wanted to do one - that's how drunk I was. Thank god she said no! (Long story, but basically a wildfire started shortly before their wedding and their venue was evacuated, and we were heading out to do pre-wedding pictures so I missed lunch. We were able to find a last-minute wedding location and the venue brought the food that they had finished cooking before the evacuation, but they were also able to bring the many cases of local wine that my friends had bought for their wedding. We all came together to make the wedding happen but they only had maybe half the amount of food, and my table was the last to go up to the served buffet so we got almost no food, and we had started drinking the wine while we were setting up the new location. We actually ordered supplemental pizza twice during the reception because everyone was starving. I was well and truly drunk by the time (first) dinner was over, and at one point passed out for a while on the lawn outside. Best wedding ever, though!)

Not needed. I hated just about every speech at my wedding. One was by my sister, who used it as a chance to make it all about her, the other was by my husband's aunt, who told some long-winded story about him as a child building robots out of cardboard, then was just like "anyway, congrats on getting married." It said absolutely nothing about me, the person he was marrying, or about our relationship, the entire point of the day.

As a vendor I went to a wedding where the best man told everyone about how he and the groom literally burned down the family's house as kids. Is that really something that needs to be said to a room full of people? Is it REALLY?

Speech-writing is an art form, first of all, and it is one that most people have no skill or talent for whatsoever. They do not understand timing, they do not understand subject matter. They think "tell a funny story about the [bride/groom] and then tell them congratulations on getting hitched" is a great speech. (It isn't.) And then a lot of them think a speech needs to be 4-5 minutes long. (It doesn't.)

Add in that the stories a lot of people think are "funny", were probably very embarrassing moments for you that you would rather forget.

Skip them, and if anyone wants to do an impromptu speech, tell your DJ to politely decline them. No one will miss them.