Tossing Out the Garter Toss
"If you're wearing lingerie that makes you feel glamorous, you're halfway there to turning heads" ~ Elle MacPherson
Through the history of the wedding party, many traditions have been lost, altered or introduced.
For example, did you know, a wedding dress used to be any color but white, with blue being most popular is it represented virginity.. It wasn't until the wedding of Queen Victoria that the white wedding dress became popular and still is 'the' color that many women feel a wedding dress should be.
But here's one custom that I certainly can do without: The garter toss, one of the oldest surviving wedding traditions.
It's rumored that back in medieval time, it was fairly normal for friends, relatives and guests to tag along with the bridal couple to the marriage bed. Talk about a menage à what?!
Eventually, things kept getting more and more rowdy and some guests were....how to put it eloquently?.... far too eager to help the bride out of her wedding attire. As a distraction, the garters were quickly removed and thrown to the hungry crowd.
As time went on, it evolved to the tradition as we know it now, where the bride sits on a chair, and the groom reaches up, pulls off her garter (sometimes with his teeth!) and tosses it to the crowd of single men. The point of this?? Besides putting on a show, the idea is that he who catches the garter, is encouraged to 'hook up' with the lucky lady who bought the bouquet.
Now I'm no prude or virgin, but the idea of my new husband's head going up my dress with the risk of flashing my underwear to my friends, mother and grandmother is not something I'm entirely comfortable with. In fact, I'm not sure I like the idea of my husbands friends checking out my legs either. Gone are the days of impromptu strip shows at college parties. I'm a lady, now.
As it turned out, many of our Facebook brides feel the same way, with 76% of our ladies rather the garter toss tradition be....well, tossed.
Of course, to keep in the spirit of things, there are plenty of things your can hide up that dress of yours that can be 'collected' by the groom and thrown to his merry men.
One idea I'm toying with is to get a clothesline and peg a bunch of ugly granny panties on it. As the new husband pulls on the clothesline, a new panty will keep coming out, each one uglier than the one before it, that he can then unpeg and throw to the crowd. Note: new underwear is probably best for this!
Another idea I'm thinking of is to strap a bunch of random things to my legs that can be thrown at his boys: the symbolic little black book, a big mac, a rubber duckie and the keys to his BMW that he now needs to trade in for a soccer mom van.
There are definitely ways to keep the crowd entertained without being too risque or turning it into a live sex show, and I'm sure no one will even notice that the garter never came off.
As for my actual garter? Well, what would be nicer than to have him remove it in the privacy of your own home/hotel room, and have it framed, to always remind you of just how a girl can always be classy and fabulous?
Posted by Jacqueline H.
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