To Throw or..No?

annakay511

I have been to more than a dozen weddings over the past few years. Recently, I've noticed that less and less are doing a bouquet toss and garter retrieval! I think it has to do with our ages - I'm 26 and fiance is 29, and our friends are all similar ages. Fiance hates the garter throw (never participates) so we have decided not to do the garter retrieval. I also do not want to do a bouquet toss. I actually think this is a really fun tradition, but there will only be a few single women at my wedding so unfortunately I think it would just be awkward! 

Are you doing a bouquet toss, or no?

Maggie0829

No tosses of any sort for us.  I really hate them and I wanted to eliminate anything that took time away from our guests getting to party it up.  And really, as a single lady at a wedding, there is nothing worse then being goaded out onto the dance floor to try and catch a bouquet because you must be desperate to get married.  Yuck.

tammym1001

We didn't do any tosses at our wedding. We eliminated almost all the wedding traditions and had an awesome dinner and a big party. The only tradition we kept was cutting the cake because I love cake.

cafarrie

Nope, we didn't do them either.  My friends think they're fun, but I was one of the last one in my group to get married.  The only ones left were some older cousins that are really not happy about the fact that they're still single and I didn't want to embarrass anyone.  

I hate the garter toss with a passion. 

wanderwoman135

I (think) I'm doing a bouquet toss at my wedding...but I'm also super young and a lot of my friends at the wedding will be single - including all my bridesmaids. I've been to a lot of weddings and the one last month was the first one I'd been to that didn't have a bouquet toss. I was a twinge sad, because I think they're fun, but in retrospect I can definitely see why she didn't have one - there weren't a whole lot of unmarried 20 somethings there, and so it would have been a bit awkward. 

I probably only like the toss because all the weddings I've been at have always had a lot of good-natured single girls.

theartistformerlyknownas

No tosses here. I didn't want to ruin my good bouquet by throwing it, or pay for a special toss bouquet, plus we had very few single chicks coming, and I didn't want to derail the party. Nobody missed it.

klk111415

Not doing the tosses either.  I'm 27 and my entire bridal party is either married or in serious relationships.  Only a few of the guys attending are single... Last wedding I was at- the bouquet toss was fine, but none of the guys wanted to catch the garter because they didn't want to put it on the girl who caught the bouquet... SOOO awkward!! 

chrissy0905

I haven't decided if I'm doing a bouquet toss yet. We're both in our early 30s, which means that many of our guests are married or in serious relationships. We only have a few single female guests, and a few more male single guests.

My FI really (REALLY!) wants to do the garter toss, but I find it so awkward! My mom, who is all about traditions, even when out and bought one and gave it to him as a gift (urgh!). Question for you guys... is the garter toss always accompanied by putting it on the girl who caught the bouquet? Can one be done without the other? Thanks!

labro

We didn't do tosses. We had very few single people at the wedding and it just would've been weird. My florist still made a toss bouquet (oops, forgot to cancel it) so we decided to do an anniversary dance. The couple married the longest "wins" and gets the toss bouquet. It was really fun to present it to my grandma and grandpa and also recognize and celebrate their 64 years of marriage so far.

mrscomposer

We had planned to do both, but ended up not doing either because we decided to leave instead

The original plan was for an anniversary dance, but then I realized that J's Granny and Grandpa would have been the longest married if Grandpa were still alive (he died a year ago).  That shut that down pretty dang quickly - no way I'm rubbing that in Granny's face.

AddieCake

Nope. Hate them.

annakay511

I have been to a wedding where they did the toss, but they just had the guy and girl who caught the garter/bouquet take a picture with the bride and groom, and they didn't do the whole put-the-garter-on-a-stranger thing.

BlueBirdMB

Nope, we didn't do either.  I don't like them.

Knottie45547263

We skipped it both the bouquet and garter toss. I haven't seen a garter toss at a wedding in years - but  few bouquet tosses here and there. 

blabla89

I think your feeling is spot-on. Singling out the single women (no pun intended) is pretty awkward. We won't be doing one for that reason. But if you really want to do the toss, you could make it less awkward by inviting all the ladies to participate (not just singles) and giving some kind of little prize to the person who catches the bouquet.

bridet0be15

No toss here.  I really hate the garter toss and find it to be a really weird tradition.  As for the bouquet toss.. I don't like it either.  Takes away from the fun.. but it isn't as bad as the garter toss.

moutonrouge

We're not doing either. Most of my friends view the bouquet toss as being only for truly single women - meaning women who are dating someone do not go up for the toss. That really narrows down the pool to high schoolers and 2 of my friends. That's just too awkward. I haven't been to a wedding that had a toss in a few years, probably because of low participation. 

vmj23

Nope!  we didn't do either.  I don't like either as a guest and didn't want ot subject my guests to it!  We are in our 30's and had very few single guests at our weddign.