After the last blog that I have written about “White Dress” one of my good friends who is getting married asked me about garter toss. Now I first was curious why and the answer was pretty much the same as I usually hear from other brides or grooms of “WHY”. Well that made me think and do my research of why do grooms toss the garter and brides toss bouquet. If you are not interested in history then feel free to read something else but if you wanted to know more about garter toss and bouquet toss (and why we are doing what we are doing) then keep on reading.
History of Garter Toss
I wanted to start with with history of garter toss because in reality it updates the bouquet toss. Which was a surprise for me. The garter toss as far we know is dated back to middle ages, let’s say 1400’s but can be argued by historians. Yet the tradition of the garter didn’t really start with garter it was more … in some interesting words it was more aggressively than what we have today. So for most part when the bride and groom was married and after the party (if there was a party) the groom would take the bride to bridal chambers and have sex with her. But the the groomsmen, bridesmaids and even sometimes guest would come in the chambers and oversee that it happened (I mean intercose). While this all was happening it was considered a good luck to have taken peice of brides dress as goodluck which at the same time the bride would throw the stockings at the guest in the bedroom (especially at the guys) and who ever gets the stockings closes to the nose would be the next to get married. I don’t think this was popular for too long and it wasn’t because which bride would like to have guest in the same bedroom to watch or listen in, and also to have her dress torn apart because the dress would represent good luck and fertility. So the garter became popular later on but still we are not there yet. While the garter replaced the guest in the bedroom the custom was that the man at the party would need to take of the garter for luck, and I can imagine where this would go since there would be lots of drunk man at the party. A note to mention that guest would get drunk even before the wedding ceremony and you can just imagine the as soon as the couple would say “I Do” lots of drunken guys would hit on your wife just to steal the garter. Well after that it became a custom for the groom to do the job, and now to this day the garter toss is done by the groom to man who are not yet married (which would mean that whoever gets the garter would be married next). Now how its done with hands or teeth well thats up to the groom to decide.
Also I would like to mention that garter would represent virginity of the bride, which would say that once the groom has taken off the garter she would no longer be a virgin and belong to the groom.
History of Bouquet Toss
The bouquet toss (stick with me) originated from garter toss. What a surprise. But it did originated from England for sure, comparing to garter well nobody knows but point at France. Bouquet toss started with instead of rip my bridal dress apart and leave me with nothing to wear to garter toss to bouquet toss. Since the over the time the wedding dresses became more and more expansive the bride was not happy to have her dress torn apart, and garter toss replaced that. But that leaves one aspect of the toss in the air. Since now the man catch the garter what about the ladies. At old times everyone would steal a part of the dress (men and woman) but garter was only to keep the guys tamied. So the answer to that question was the bouquet toss. But why bouquet? Well flowers would in some sense represent fertility (and it was cheap commodity to throw at guests). So in the end the bouquet toss would help out all single ladies at the wedding and garter for the guys.
Before I finish I would like to tell you interesting fact about garter and bouquet toss. Garter toss is the least popular nowadays and still going down the hill but by a survey taken over 50 years from 1960’s to 2010 it states that the bouquet toss is still actives but has only gone up to one percent in past 50 years, from 23% to 24% of all weddings in United States.
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