A Guide To The Wedding Garter Tradition

We're going to talk to you about how to choose your wedding garter. It's a little bit like the throwing of the bouquet. So, when the bride throws the bouquet, the woman who catches it – she's the next one to get married and it will bring her good luck.

The same thing applies to the modern tradition of tossing the wedding garter. The woman takes off the garter, tosses it over to the men and then the man who catches it – he's meant to be the next one to get married and it will bring him good luck. The main thing to think about when choosing your wedding garter is the sort of style of dress you have.

Now, if you have a really traditional full A-line skirt, then it doesn't really matter. You can wear the garter. But a lot of the time these days, the dresses are a lot slimmer so the wedding garter can be seen underneath.

Or the fact that the underwear you have to kind of wear underneath doesn't really allow for a nice shot of the leg, so you can wear them a bit further down as well, or put them on simply before the photo, you know, around by the top of your knee and then do the tossing of the garter. So really, it all depends on what style of dress you go for, depending whether you wear the garter throughout the ceremony and the whole day or whether you just sort of put it on for the photos for the sort of traditional shot, really. Due to the tradition of the wedding garter and the fact that it does go back to the medieval times, it's quite a large part of the wedding, is that the mother will pass her garter down to her daughter.

So in the evening of the wedding, the bride and groom will go upstairs to consummate their marriage, and family and friends will go up after them and actually try and grab something from the bride, a piece of clothing, or from the groom, so they could run downstairs and prove that the couple has actually consummated their marriage. Obviously, the bride and groom will get really annoyed about this. So then, the groom actually used to take the garter off the woman and throw it, toss it over into the crowd of people, so then they could run downstairs and they could use that as proof that the couple had consummated their marriage.

Obviously, that was a bit distracting. It doesn't really happen these days that a man and woman would want their family and friends in their room whilst they're consummating their marriage. So, a modern interpretation of this tradition is now in force which is you have to wear the garter on your wedding day and that the bride will take it off at the reception as opposed to the bedroom and it will get tossed into the groomsmen crowd, and that's where the tradition of the wedding garter comes from.

And the man who actually catches the wedding garter, that would bring him good luck and he would be the next one to get married, so a bit sort of similar, like the throwing of the bouquet, but for the men. And that's the tradition behind the wedding garter. .