Garter Toss??

sarahmraley

My fiance's parents have voiced their opinions on traditional "events" happening at our wedding.  My future brother-in-law got married last October and they didn't do any of the traditional things and they were quite upset about it.  My mother has also said she really wants me to do the bouquet toss.  My feeling about the garter toss is that it is completely out of my comfort zone.  I am rather conservative and having my future husband putting his hands up my dress in front of 175 people really makes me uncomfortable.  Do I suck it up and just do it to avoid confrontation, or is there something else we can do without compromising my comfort level?  Is this a weird thing to be anxious about??  I watched how many issues there were for my fiance's brother's wedding and I don't want any unneeded drama attached to our wedding!   Uggh!  Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

starrbuk13

i think if you are uncomfortable with the garter toss, just don't do it.  a bouquet is different...it's not as personal.  but seriously, if FI's parents are going to get pissy b/c you don't want him going up your dress in front of all your guests.....that's ridiculous.  can you keep them happy by doing traditional dances, cake cutting, bouquet...etc, but just not the garter?

you can always just not say anything to your future ILs, not do it, and if they ask, just say "oops, i guess the DJ forgot!"

JennandJoel2010

You can still do a garter toss and not have your FI up your dress. Many couples excuse themselves to the bathroom or bridal suite and take it off there; if nothing else it gives you a few minutes to sneak away and have some alone time with your new husband. Then he can just keep it in his pocket until it's time to throw.

I personally despise the garter and bouquet toss. I find it awkward for everybody involved and I don't really see a point to it. It just seems like in the past it may have had some sort of meaning (but really, the woman who catches it NEVER gets married next!), and now people just do it because it's "tradition" and they feel like they need to because it's what "happens" at a wedding.  I'm totally skipping it, and I'd be thrilled if I never saw it happen again.

Good luck with your decision!

jennylove810

Honestly Sarah, here's the thing.

Over the next 7 months you will do a lot of compromising on a lot of different topics, but if you don't want to do the garter & bouquet tosses, it's your future in-laws who can suck it up, not you.  I rarely toss out the "it's your day" line, but... it's your day.  I'm not doing the tosses, either.  I know my family wishes that I would, but after agreeing to a a church ceremony, a MOH when I wasn't planning on having one, and a horse-and-buggy arrival, I am DONE with other people having influence over my wedding.

I'm assuming your FILs already had their own wedding.  Now it's time for them to let you have yours.

And FWIW, there is only drama when you allow drama.  Nip it right in the bud early.

irishxmyst

Jenny said it best.  There are plenty of compromises and negotiations you will have to make, but if something makes you flat out uncomfortable, you do not have to do it and you do not have to let other pressure you into it "for tradition's sake."  Look at it this way, if you begrudgingly agree to do the garter toss, you will spend a lot of your reception dreading the moment instead of having fun.  That is where I drew the line.  If it was something that would preoccupy me during my wedding, it wasn't going to fly.

Like pp said if you do the traditional dances, the cake cutting, and the bouquet toss, they your FILs have no right to complain (they really wouldn't anyway, even if you didn't want to do any of it).  They had their wedding, it's time for yours.

I'm doing the bouquet toss (because why not take an opportunity to chuck a bunch of flowers into a crowd, I see it as stress relief), but I'm not doing the garter toss.  I understand what you mean about the garter toss.  I'm far from what people would call conservative or traditional, and maybe if it was just my friends present I wouldn't care about the garter toss because we've done much worse things in front of each other, but the thought of FI shimy-ing his hand (or mouth) up my leg and under my dress while grandpa is 5 feet away just feels wrong.  (And IMO, everyone in the room knows we're going to have sex that night.  We don't need to remind them.)

singleMOH79

We're not tossing anything, and no one has said anything about it (yet).

But at my brother's wedding, my sister-in-law tossed the bouquet, and my brother tossed the garter--but he never took it off her leg. They had a separate tossing garter, so they skipped the awkward "hands up the dress" step. :]