To Garter or Not to Garter

Tossing the wedding garter is one of the oldest surviving wedding traditions today. "The garter tradition originated back to the 14th century. In parts of Europe the guests of the bride and groom believed having a piece of the bride’s clothing was thought to bring good luck. They would actually destroy the brides dress by ripping off pieces of fabric. Obviously, this tradition did not sit well with the bride, so she began throwing various items to the guests – the garter being one of them. It became customary for the bride to toss the garter to the men. But this also caused a great problem for the bride….sometimes the men would get drunk, become impatient and try to remove the garter ahead of time. Therefore, the custom derived at having the groom remove and toss the garter to the men. With this change, the bride began to toss the bridal boutique to the unwed girls who were eligible for marriage."


I'm a little torn on this one because we were not planning to do the garter toss or the bouquet toss at the wedding. After being invited to (I think) 12 weddings over the past 2 years or so it's safe to say that most of our close friends are married now and doesn't leave many single friends left to catch either pieces. One article suggests that "one way of "saving the tradition," but sensitizing it, is to have all the female guests, not just the unmarried ones, participate in the bouquet toss," which isn't a terrible idea. 


Regardless if we do the garter toss or not I was still contemplating purchasing a garter more for sentimental reasons though. I don't know if this is stupid, but I was thinking if I should ever have a daughter that on her wedding day I would want to give her something old, I know obviously she would not wear my dress or anything like that and I don't have any fancy jewelry (yet) but I thought it might be sentimental if I had a garter from our wedding that I could pass down, it would be something I wore on my wedding day. Of course I don't know how one would even age, or if I would even be lucky enough to have a daughter one day but still something that popped into my head as I thought more about our wedding.