Garter toss?

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passus said:
Uhm, yeah, I was about to comment on that in fact. I’ve been to 5 weddings in the past 2 years (lots of cousins!) and if there was one thing common to all of them, it was the dirty or “booty” dancing. I felt embarrassed for everyone on the dance floor.
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If the bride or groom is “grinding” on the dance floor, that’s obviously an issue. But if it’s the guests, how do you prevent it? Most of the time, the bride and groom aren’t focused too much on the dance floor, so they’re not going to “catch it” right away. Even when they see it, getting on the mic and asking people to stop dancing a certain way seems like bad etiquette. All you can really do is ask the DJ to change the music, which again, takes some time.
 
I HATE the garter toss. I think it’s uber tacky. We didn’t do it and everyone seemed to have a good time w/out it. 😃
 
I attended a Catholic wedding last month, and the taking off the garter with the teeth was completely omitted…and no one cared. The bride sat on the chair, SHE removed it, and then the groom threw it. No one will care. I think that the taking the garter off with the teeth is not necessary, so feel free to omit it! 🙂
 
When my boyfriend and I do get married we won’t be having the bouquet toss or the garter toss. One - the number of single friends that we know who would participate in these events is very low. Two - I don’t like the idea of my boyfriend’s head under my dress in the presence of our granparents. So for these reasons we won’t do them. However, I do think that they can be made simple and not X-rated if the intent is appropriate. No head under dress, no raunchy music, etc.
 
I was married last summer and I did a bouquet toss, but no garter toss. My husband is shy by nature and wouldn’t have wanted that kind of attention and I’m not crazy about the custom anyway. Moreover, I knew all of my young female cousins (ranging from 3-25) would want to try to catch the bouquet; can you imagine how creepy it would be if a 30-year-old single guy was expected to put a garter on an eight-year-old girl? Eeeww.
 
We had neither at our wedding. The boquet toss is a silly superstition and the garter toss, even when “tastefully” done, is immodest and embarrasing, IMO. We had a wedding Mass, followed by a modest sized reception where the music and the dancing were, at least from what I saw, low-key and tasteful. The food was great and many of those invited still tell me what a great time they had…even the younger ones :D.

Our marriage seems to be surviving depite the absence of those “necessary” traditions!🙂
 
shannyk said:
Garter toss…eh. It’s just so tacky to me, no matter how it’s done, no offense to anyone.

I had a really small wedding so there wasn’t any tossing of bouquets or garters, but if I had a bigger wedding I wouldn’t do them. I’d want to keep my bouquet and garter (if i had one).

The weddings I’ve been to recently there hasn’t been a garter toss and in some cases no bouquet toss either. Maybe these are falling out of favor?

Like puzzleannie said, nothing could be more inappropriate than the teeth thing. If you’re really not into it and your fiance doesn’t care either way, maybe find yourselves a new ‘tradition’?
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Your last idea about creating a new tradition for your family is a good one. I was wondering if anyone had any good ideas that would be both fun and tasteful.
 
All the weddings I’ve been to, except my brothers, (and mine) have had a garter toss… and usually with the teeth.

A Catholic should have no part of this. It’s distasteful, immodest, and downright impure and sexualized. God is not please with such blatant signs of impurity.

Why disrespect yourself in front of a crowd of family, friends and acquaintances? If you want to have fun do it in the seclusion of your own home during your honeymoon.
 
Yeah. That taking off the garter with the teeth thing has been around since before I got married some 20+ years ago. But back then more guys *talked *about taking the garter off with their teeth than actually did it. Most brides I knew were too embarrassed to cooperate with something like that. My husband removed it but he just used his hands.

I’ve never heard of putting the garter on the bouquet catcher. I don’t remember that at any recent weddings I’ve attended. But then I think I’ve only attended two weddings in the last 10 years.
 
Irishmom2 said:
It still just seems a little odd to me if you are coming from a Catholic wedding. Everyone is respectful and “holy” in church but then everyone gets to the reception and there is the "provocative " garter dance thing? It seems like there is a totally different standard and sense of good taste at the reception then. What is the purpose really? I don’t get it. How is this a celebration of one’s wedding day?
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I’m with you. We didn’t do anything garter-wise. In fact I didn’t even wear one. I certainly wasn’t going to wear stockings that needed a garter on a day when I would be standing all day! 😉

I did throw my bouquet, but at the very end of the reception and it was just my unmarried cousins in the catching group.

Receptions can be fun without any kind of sexy dancing or suggestiveness going on among the guests!
 
Well, I got married 5 yrs ago and we did it. Its a tradition around where we got married, and I see no problem with it if not done in a crass way. I don’t find it tacky, nor do I find that it has to be immodest/sexualized etc. 🙂 I had two garters, one to keep and one to toss, I can’t remember if I wore 2 and had dh throw the second one or if I just brought it with me to be tossed. Dh took it off me, but it was around my knee and he used his hands without making a big deal and just took it off. Neither of us would have been ok with doing it with the teeth. I have never seen the guy that catches the garter having to put it on the girl who caught the bouquet either, so that wasn’t an issue for us. I think the tradition is that the girl who catches will be “the next girl to get married”, and the guy who catches it will be the “next guy to get married”, but its just a joke. Honestly, I can’t really remember who caught the bouquet at my wedding, but I think it was a little girl. I didn’t throw my actual bouquet either, because I had placed it in front of the Virgin Mary during the wedding ceremony, so I just threw another bouquet that I can’t remember where I got it from lol. Prolly the florist made and extra one or something. I don’t think its a big deal whether or not you do it, I think you guys should choose what you would prefer and just stick with that. I think it can be done without being vulgar etc, but in the end if you don’t feel comfortable with it you don’t have to do it. Now, the cake thing, I told dh that I thought that was grounds for annulment, if he dared to try to do it I would have left him right then and there (jk) . Thankfully he felt the same :)!
 
The garter is not necessarily a functional one that actually holds up a stocking. In fact, it’s usually no more “functional” than the buttonhole on a man’s lapel.

There’s the old rhyme,

“Something old, something new,
something borrowed, something blue,
and a lucky sixpence in her shoe.”

My mom tells me she wore a blue garter at her wedding (1964), and I caught one at a reception back in the nineties.

I have not seen the remove-the-garter-with-the-teeth thing (praise God), but I have seen the toss, with the garter-catcher putting the garter on the bouquet catcher (with varying degrees of immodesty). I also have not seen (in person) the smooshing of cake in each other’s face.

If you want to do the “traditions” above, I suggest:

– spinsters (and widders :D) gather, bride throws bouquet
– “eligible” menfolk gather, bride discreetly removes garter, gives to groom, he fires it into the crowd
– garter catcher asks bouquet catcher for the honour of the next dance. And that’s that.

Oh, and as for the cake thing:

– bride and groom feed each other a small piece (an inch each way, at most) of cake in a gentle and loving (and RESPECTFUL) fashion; I always believed that this was symbolic of the bride and groom caring for and “nourishing” each other (but then again, I can be on the naive side)

I have also thought that the father of the bride and the mother of the groom having a “last dance” with their respective children was a sweet tradition…but then again, I’m a bit of a sap :rolleyes:
 
I went to a wedding once where they omitted the garter and the bouquet toss and did something a lot more meaningful. They got all of the married couples onto the dance floor and played some slow music. Then they started saying “if you have been married less than 2 hours, leave the dance floor” and of course the bride and groom left. Then they said, “if you have been married less than one year, leave the dance floor” , “if you have been married less than five years, leave the floor” and it kept going and going until there were only two couples left. One was the brides parents and the other was my boyfriend’s parents. (they are all cousins). Then they said whoever has been married less than 45 years leave the dance floor and then my boyfriend’s parents were all alone on the dance floor. It so special and so meaningful and I think it was a great way for the bride and groom to celebrate their beginnings. They got to see how happy the folks who have been married for almost 50 years still were.
 
FastLearner said:
As other people mentioned, the men don’t get nearly as excited about it as the women.
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I’m a man… and you’ve got that one right. Seriously, why would you be throwing underwear around at a Catholic wedding? Some might say that there’s nothing sexual about it…so if that was true, then is the garter toss invariably accompanied by “sexy” music and other such overtones?

Because I am uncomfortable with the sexual connotations of the garter toss, I avoid it when I go to weddings. Of course, when you avoid it, other people make uncomfortable assumptions of their own, like this one that I copied from another thread:
…We were at a wedding, and when it came time for the garter toss, her 30 year old boyfriend dashed off to the bathroom as if his life depended on it! It was a disgusting display, and she dumped him soon after that.
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I guess this garter toss thing is wayyy more important to women that it is to men. :confused: The possibility that I would have to put the garter on the leg of the woman who caught the bouquet is by itself enough to convince me to avoid it or sit it out.
 
Irishmom2 said:
Like the disgusting cake smashing custom, I hope that my own children will be planning to leave those things out of their wedding receptions.
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Now, I never understood why the “cake smashing” elicits the same adamant opposition that the garter toss does. Unlike the garter toss, there is nothing remotely crass or sexual about it, and you’re not coercing your guests into participating in something that they don’t want to do.

Although I haven’t seen it happen at very many weddings, I’m guessing that people do it because they see it as being silly and lighthearted, and not as an aggressive act. :confused: It seems similar to the tradition that some people have of smearing cake on the birthday boy/girl/man/woman at a birthday party…it’s supposed to be an affectionate gesture, not a hostile one.
 
I agree with you ack about not liking the sexual connotation of the garter toss. I don’t think wedding receptions and pre-wedding parties (more specifically the bachelor and bachelorette parties) are as clean as they should be. I know that isn’t always the case, but for many it is. I feel like the only one who doesn’t get excited about those things. I wish there were more practicing Catholics my age. I only know a few people who aren’t or haven’t lived with their fiance or boyfriend/girlfriend before marriage, and I don’t see any other young people at daily mass. sigh I’ve got a great guy though, and for that I’m happy 🙂
 
We did both the garter toss and the bouquet toss at our wedding.

I had a back up bouquet to toss, because my actual wedding bouquet included my Grandmother’s antique Bible in it…not something to be throw around. My husband removed my garter with his HANDS (Teeth thing seems the ultimate of tacky) in a tasteful manner.

The tosses actually turned out to be two really funny and memorable moments of the reception. I was actually aiming my bouquet for an unmarried cousin who would have been thrilled to catch it. You can see my concentration in the pictures and that I was trying to aim over my right shoulder…I ended up lobbing it directly to my 19 year old sister, who was abjectly trying NOT to catch it. The blow by blow pictures are funny. Same thing with the garter…my husband tried to aim for our best man, and it got caught in the lights above the dance floor, fell through his hands, bounce off his chest and landed on the floor where it was snatched up by my ten year old cousin. Again the blow by blow pictures were hysterical…especially our best man’s baffled look as it fell through his hands.

We opted not to do the married couple dance…there were several divorced and seperated people at the reception…including my mother, and a couple of the older attendees had recently lost spouses…we really did not want anyone to be sad or feel awkward.

I think that a garter toss or bouquet toss is a lot of fun, but it really boils down to it’s your wedding, do what you are comfortable with. (Though the removing the garter with your teeth, or grinding, or sexually explict dancing is still pretty tacky in my opinion)
 
Don’t do anything at your reception that will be embarrassing when your teenage children watch it in 15 years.

You don’t want to have to explain why you were so ewwwwww grossssssss!

I didn’t do the garter thing. And I’m with the other poster… I would have left the groom at the reception hall if he had smeared cake in my face. Matter of fact, wish he had. Would have shown me the aggression to come in time for me to bail before too much damage was done.

(Yes, it IS VERY aggressive to smear cake on a woman’s face when she has her wedding makeup and hairdo and to make her look like a fool.)
 
I think the cake smearing where the bride ends up completely masked in the stuff is a very aggressive act of disrespect. Considering the amount of time and money spent on the make-up and dress, I fail to see the fun in this new addition to tradition. Thankfully, I’ve only seen it on TV.

Yes, did the garter and bouquet toss. Hubby took garter off respectively and groomsman put it on girlfriend up to her knee. If I had ever seen the goings on that I later have witnessed, I would have scratched the garter toss. I haven’t seen a garter toss at any weddings we’ve attended in many years.

There was a Catholic wedding on Bridezillas. I assume the priest didn’t know that those cameras were from the show. Don’t think she learned much at Cana but are bridezillas even a topic?
 
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