It’s no secret that many wedding traditions have evolved from acts and beliefs that are centuries old. By definition, that is what makes them traditions. When the bride lays out her attire for her wedding day, she will good-naturedly try to include (usually with the affectionate help of friends and relatives) “something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue.” The sky won’t fall if she doesn’t observe these seemingly obscure customs, but she does it because it’s a fun, sweet, old-fashioned tradition that makes the occasion more special. If the bride is a no-nonsense person who refuses be bothered, she doesn’t shake her fist belligerently and shout, “Oh yeah? Something blue or WHAT?” She simply goes about her bridal business, and nobody is necessarily the wiser.
So why are some traditions viewed as “happy wedding fun,” while others have become targets of wedding-guest tedium or outright scorn? Referring specifically to the bride’s tossing of the bouquet, and the groom’s tossing of the bride’s garter, sometimes you have to look at what the message these traditions seem to be saying in view of the way society has changed.
A quick look at any list of wedding traditions will show that the throwing of the bouquet harks back to a day when a woman at (or approaching) marriageable age so desperately needed a husband to remove one mouth from her parents’ table, that the unmarried women at a wedding would literally shred the bride’s dress (and this was at a time when it may have been her ONLY dress), hoping that the good fortune of the bride in finding a husband might be favorably transferred to themselves by salvaging a scrap of the fabric. Eventually, in an effort to make the festivities more civil, the bride’s hand-held bundle of posies was flung, coming loose and scattering this “luck” to the numerous women who plucked a flower from the air. As weddings became more civilized, and bouquets evolved into the bound arrangements that they are today, the bouquet was thrown to the single women on hand, with the idea that the lucky lady who caught the bouquet was destined to be next bride.
So why is it like pulling hen’s teeth to prod a group of single women out into the open to catch the bouquet these days? Everyone accepts that women have careers, can support themselves and have no absolute societal need to snag a husband–but after all, it’s just an old-fashioned tradition–a game, really. Why are women so reluctant to just play along? Well, consider how it spotlights these women in front of a crowd in the unflattering light of the other message it sends: Look at me, I’m single and desperate to catch a man. I must be undesirable and left-over. And if they’re pushing 30: Somebody please rescue me from the horrible fate of being an old maid! No wonder nobody wants to play, in spite of wishing the bride well and wanting her day to be festive.
The history of the garter toss is even less civilized: it harks back to the bride being carried off (literally) to be deflowered while the wedding feast continued, often with inebriated men bursting into the room to cheer on the process. This bearing-witness that the man had claimed his prize was eventually toned down to the new husband leaving his traumatized bride behind to rejoin the festivities, waving the bloodied bedsheet as evidence. This raw crudeness was eventually subdued into the relatively tame show of being publicly allowed to reach under his bride’s petticoats (showing increasing amounts of leg as the decades rolled on), to remove her lacy garter–an “intimate” undergarment that only he had the right to take–to show as his prize, which he then tossed to the male onlookers, to give them a vicarious thrill. Simple competition served as the motivation to catch the garter, and the recipient got all manner of mannish claps on the back. Of course, in polite society that kind of ugly history simply would not do, and so it was swept under the rug, and the tossing of the garter became the male counterpart of the bouquet toss–the catcher would be the next groom. This is the garter toss that we know today.
So what’s the problem with this? The problem is the same as with the ladies: just as women carry the residual myth of frantically wanting to be married, today’s men foster within each other the idea that marriage is something to be avoided as long as possible–so why would they want to step forward to claim a prize that marks them as the next “victim?”
At one wedding I watched with mortification as the men came forward but then stood with their arms at their sides, refusing to reach out for the garter, allowing it to simply drop to the floor, as a “joke” at the groom’s expense by several of his friends. The couple began to blush with embarrassment, saved only by a teenager much too young to consider marriage, making a last dive for the garter and putting it back in play, where it was happily snatched by an Army man in uniform, who saw no honor in this “reverse game.”
So it’s a sad but true fact that these happy wedding moments are often approached with trepidation by the bride and groom, knowing they will be met with anything from reluctance to outright resistance. How to turn around this trend?
Historically, bribery has generally worked well to guarantee the outcome of questionable results in many facets of life, and why should weddings be any different?. A prize can add to the fun and excitement of the celebration, and turn both of these customs into the brief, high-spirited competitions that they are intended to be. Simply have your D.J. or M.C. call the ladies out to the bouquet toss by announcing that the winning party will receive NOT ONLY the honor of catching the bouquet, but also a gift certificate for a manicure or pedicure (at a local salon–it will cost $20 or less); and when garter time rolls around for the men, make a similar introduction that the winner will receive an iTunes gift card (which you would buy in an equivalent amount). Small expenses, big results. The announcer can then not only announce the winner, but hand over the prize in a pretty note card thanking them for their participation.
Brides around bridal blogs are reporting that this small investment is re-instituting a much more enthusiastic willingness to participate in these funky old traditions that are usually the last acts of the evening before departure. So why not leave them with a little something they didn’t expect, instead of feeling coerced into something that makes them uncomfortable, before you drive away?
