To Toss the Bouquet or Not
At our wedding I decided not to toss the bouquet. Why? For years I was the dreaded Maid-of-Honor. Eighteen times to be exact. All my friends got married before me. As soon as they called all the single girls up to the stage – I ran for the bathroom. One of my girlfriends got on the microphone and said “we cannot start until my Maid-of-Honor is present because she is single”. She sent two people to retrieve me from the bathroom stall I was hiding in. How humiliating. It’s like announcing that you haven’t found someone yet as if to say something is wrong with you. Funny, I caught all 17 bouquets, aimed right for me until the last one in which I gentle pushed one of the flower girls in front of me. I had to break the cycle. It was jinxing me from finding Mr. Right. Really!
So at our wedding I decided not to embarrass my friends, cousins and family members who were single. Instead I research who on our guest list might be having an anniversary, was married fifty plus years or had something special coming up. I wanted to honor someone that we could model ourselves after. It turned out that my boss and her husband just celebrate their 25th Anniversary. She was like a second mother to me. It was perfect.
When it came time to toss the bouquet I grabbed the microphone and made an announcement that we were not going to do the dollar dance, toss the garter or bouquet, instead I said, we will be honoring a couple tonight that is very dear to us and who have just celebrated their 25th Wedding Anniversary. We hope that our marriage will be as blessed as theirs is. I gave them the bouquet, congratulated them both. They were both so touched. There were many tears and ahhhs from that little moment. I had equally as many people thank me for not dragging them up onto the stage.
It was fun to step outside the traditional wedding box. Create your own special moments. Just because everyone else is tossing the bouquet doesn’t mean you have to. Make a lasting memory.
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19, March 2010, 12:56am -Great article. Thanks for sharing hope to see more from you.
29, April 2010, 11:35pm -I hate the bouquet toss for the same reason too. I was at a wedding where the DJ started harassing all the women sitting on the sidelines and shouted “even if you’re engaged, you’re technically still single so you better get up here.”
I know my DJ would never be that crass, but that sure helped me decide that it would be a good idea to skip the tosses.
26, January 2012, 9:27am -Thank you! We had already tossed out the idea of doing the garter toss for this very reason, but because of tradition we were going to do a flower toss. However after reading this article, you’ve inspired me. There is a couple, my husband to be and I are both very close to who will be celebrating a big anniversary just a few months after we get married. It would be so special for me to give her my bouquet instead.
29, January 2012, 12:44am -Make sure you get someone to take a picture of that special moment and then you can have it framed and give it to them on their anniversary.
29, January 2012, 10:15pm -