Planning our wedding!

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bdjohnbg

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I’m very excited to be planning mine and my fiance’s wedding, (only 14 months to go!), but I have to say it gets a tad bit overwhelming at times! I guess I didn’t realize how much work goes into it, lol!

At any rate, I’m posting a thread here looking for some suggestions about something specific. My fiance and I find the whole reaching up my dress, pulling off a garter, and tossing it to other men thing kind of vulgar. I’m not necessarily judging people who want to do that, I’m just saying it isn’t for us. The problem is that we cannot decide whether to replace it with something else (and if so, what??), or to just nix it completely and have me just toss the bouquet. Or should we just not do either??

(Side note: I did pose this question to our wedding party, but they all seem to agree that we are silly for letting that bother us, since they view it as a simple wedding reception “tradition.”)

I suppose I would just like to hear what other people think. Are we being silly, or should we do something else? And what suggestions would you have?

Thanks for reading, and responding!
 
I don’t find the garter thing tasteful either, so we didn’t do that or the bouquet toss. I wouldn’t have minded doing the bouquet toss, but there really weren’t enough unmarried women at our wedding anyway to make it worthwhile. We didn’t replace these with anything else, and no one seemed to care or even notice.

I’ve heard of some brides giving the bouquet to the couple that has been married the longest, or giving it to their mother and/or mother in law. Some brides leave the flowers on a deceased relative’s grave.

My advice is not to worry too much about it. When you’re planning a wedding everyone has an opinion about everything, and you stress out about whether so-and-so will like it, or will people be bored, or what will people think…and in the end, the day goes by so fast, and everyone there is happy for you and no one even notices most of the details you planned and agonized over. Don’t worry about what’s “traditional”- this is your wedding and as long as you have all the elements the church requires, everything else is optional. If you don’t want to do the garter or bouquet toss, just don’t include them and most people will barely notice.
 
My fiance and I are having this discussion right now too. I am 100% pro garter toss as I’ve never been to a wedding without one. (That includes a very traditional Mormon reception.). He isn’t against it, except that his family may find it distasteful. Until the Mormon reception he’d never even been to a wedding where it was done, I had to tell him about it! So far we have tentatively decided that I will wear the garter lower on my leg and that he will use his hands, not teeth. Also instead of a crude party song like ‘Cherry Pie’ or ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ we’re going to go with something a bit more tame, but we haven’t decided what it is yet.

It was important to me to include it because it’s something I’ve seen everyone in my family do and I like the tradition behind it. (In the middle ages it was considered good luck to get a piece of the bride’s dress, so often times the guests would swarm her and rip her dress to pieces. To prevent brides from being attacked and stripped nude, the tradition was implemented.). We are also going to include the history behind the cake cutting, garter toss, and bouquet toss on little cards at every table.

Marriage is about compromise and solving problems, and this is the first of many.

If you and your groom want to do it I hope my suggestions helped. If not don’t worry about it, it’s your day and no one will care.
 
First off, Congratulations!

Second, you can include or not include any thing you find distasteful that are traditions at the wedding reception as much as you desire. If you’re uncomfortable with the garter toss, don’t do it. I love the idea of giving the bridal bouquet to the couple married the longest, wish I had thought of that.

People may be disappointed that you didn’t feel comfortable about including the garter toss and complain, but its your wedding day, not their’s. We didn’t smash the cake into each other’s faces and some people complained that we weren’t “nasty” with each other, but that’s not the way we wanted to start off our marriage. Don’t do anything you will wish you hadn’t done when you look back on the wedding day pictures. The garter toss is not mandatory, the Sacrament of Matrimony is.
 
PatriceA said:
First off, Congratulations!

Second, you can include or not include any thing you find distasteful that are traditions at the wedding reception as much as you desire. If you’re uncomfortable with the garter toss, don’t do it. I love the idea of giving the bridal bouquet to the couple married the longest, wish I had thought of that.

People may be disappointed that you didn’t feel comfortable about including the garter toss and complain, but its your wedding day, not their’s. We didn’t smash the cake into each other’s faces and some people complained that we weren’t “nasty” with each other, but that’s not the way we wanted to start off our marriage. Don’t do anything you will wish you hadn’t done when you look back on the wedding day pictures. The garter toss is not mandatory, the Sacrament of Matrimony is.
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Also, the bouquet is a lovely gift to give a friend or relative who is also getting married soon, especially if someone in your bridal party is engaged.
 
When we married three years ago, we chose to just delete the whole garter routine. I did the bouquet toss, and no one said anything to us about it. Often, the vulgarity comes when the guy who catches it is putting on a woman who is not his wife. We didn’t replace the garter toss with anything. You’re gonna be getting a lot of unsolicited advice from people around you. But this is a day when you can do what you want, without a lot of apologies.

Have fun, and congrats!
 
I think the garter thing is dumb and uncomfortable to watch. I don’t really want to see a guy reaching up a woman’s dress with his hands or face, whether they’re married or not. We didn’t do it at our wedding. To me, the thought of my father and grandfather watching that was absolutely mortifying.
 
Why not have two garters, one on the bride and one on the wedding party table at the reception?
 
A possible variation is to let your husband throw the garter without having to take it off you in a tasteless way. You could just set it aside until the appropriate time. I did the garter thing at my wedding and I didn’t see anything gross about it. The music the DJ played was not in poor taste and my husband isn’t a crude person either, so that probably helps. If you don’t want to throw a garter, maybe you could get an inexpensive tall groom’s hat from a party store and toss that instead.
 
bdjohnbg said:
I’m very excited to be planning mine and my fiance’s wedding, (only 14 months to go!), but I have to say it gets a tad bit overwhelming at times! I guess I didn’t realize how much work goes into it, lol!

At any rate, I’m posting a thread here looking for some suggestions about something specific. My fiance and I find the whole reaching up my dress, pulling off a garter, and tossing it to other men thing kind of vulgar. I’m not necessarily judging people who want to do that, I’m just saying it isn’t for us. The problem is that we cannot decide whether to replace it with something else (and if so, what??), or to just nix it completely and have me just toss the bouquet. Or should we just not do either??

(Side note: I did pose this question to our wedding party, but they all seem to agree that we are silly for letting that bother us, since they view it as a simple wedding reception “tradition.”)

I suppose I would just like to hear what other people think. Are we being silly, or should we do something else? And what suggestions would you have?

Thanks for reading, and responding!
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We thought it was really vulgar and silly-***, too, and just did without it. And later we had some very positive comments on this decision.

Good luck with things! Remember, the groom’s there to help; the bride’s the decisionmaker.
 
It’s your wedding. Do what makes you happy and hope that your friends and relatives respect that it’s your day.
 
At the reception, you can decide what traditions you would like to incorporate and what you would like to skip. We didn’t do a bouquet toss or the garter toss. When I was single I hated the bouquet toss, as did many of my single friends and family members. I always viewed it as “let’s gather all the single girls together and remind them that they are not getting married today”. My sister-in-law said that she was so grateful that we didn’t have the bouquet toss (she had just gotten out of a really bad relationship). I didn’t want to wear a garter, and wasn’t thrilled about the idea of my hubby reaching up my dress in front of our families and friends, so we skipped it. We also didn’t want to stop the party once the dancing started, so all of the “ceremony” things at the reception - parent dances, cutting the cake - happened right after dinner. Once the dancing started, it didn’t stop for 5 hours until the reception was over.
 
The garter toss can get vulgar and the bouquet thing can be embarrassing. At one wedding, they did both and a 12 yr. old girl caught the bouquet. I don’t think anyone should be on the floor unless they’re at least 17.

Another one I don’t like is the cake thing. What’s with mushing it into each other’s face? Feeding a bite to each other is nice but the other is mean.
 
aicirt said:
The garter toss can get vulgar and the bouquet thing can be embarrassing. At one wedding, they did both and a 12 yr. old girl caught the bouquet. I don’t think anyone should be on the floor unless they’re at least 17.

Another one I don’t like is the cake thing. What’s with mushing it into each other’s face? Feeding a bite to each other is nice but the other is mean.
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We did the cake feeding and we did not mush it on each other. I don’t really like that either. For one, I didn’t want to mess up my dress or my husband’s tux that was rented and had to be returned. Afterward my grandpa said “I’m so glad you didn’t do that! I just think that’s so mean.”
 
anp1215 said:
We did the cake feeding and we did not mush it on each other. I don’t really like that either. For one, I didn’t want to mess up my dress or my husband’s tux that was rented and had to be returned. Afterward my grandpa said “I’m so glad you didn’t do that! I just think that’s so mean.”
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I’m proud of you too. :thumbsup Don’t want your dress nor your make-up ruined.
 
aicirt said:
I’m proud of you too. :thumbsup Don’t want your dress nor your make-up ruined.
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Yeah, my mom spent quite a bit to have that makeup done, you bet I was going to wear it all day and night!
 
I tossed my bouquet, we did not have a garter or garter toss, and we did not replace it with anything else.

The end.

We did not consult anyone on our decision, and really didn’t care what anyone else thought.
 
anp1215 said:
We did the cake feeding and we did not mush it on each other. I don’t really like that either. For one, I didn’t want to mess up my dress or my husband’s tux that was rented and had to be returned. Afterward my grandpa said “I’m so glad you didn’t do that! I just think that’s so mean.”
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My mother always said any cake smashers’ marriage wouldn’t last, because they had no respect for each other.
 
bdjohnbg said:
I’m very excited to be planning mine and my fiance’s wedding, (only 14 months to go!), but I have to say it gets a tad bit overwhelming at times! I guess I didn’t realize how much work goes into it, lol!

At any rate, I’m posting a thread here looking for some suggestions about something specific. My fiance and I find the whole reaching up my dress, pulling off a garter, and tossing it to other men thing kind of vulgar. I’m not necessarily judging people who want to do that, I’m just saying it isn’t for us. The problem is that we cannot decide whether to replace it with something else (and if so, what??), or to just nix it completely and have me just toss the bouquet. Or should we just not do either??

(Side note: I did pose this question to our wedding party, but they all seem to agree that we are silly for letting that bother us, since they view it as a simple wedding reception “tradition.”)

I suppose I would just like to hear what other people think. Are we being silly, or should we do something else? And what suggestions would you have?

Thanks for reading, and responding!
Click to expand...
I had some friends do musical chairs instead of the bouquet and garter toss, one game for the women and another for the men. It was actually quite fun and everyone had a good time with it.
 
If other people to view it as a tradition, it does’nt mean you should do it. Other people’s opinion should not pressure you and your fiance to do what your not comfortable with on
a very important day.
 
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