History of Wedding Garters
Wedding garters are a staple of any bride’s wedding ensemble and the wedding garter ceremony is a well anticipated activity at any wedding reception. While it remains a riotous and somewhat bawdy tradition, it is tame today in comparison to where the tradition originally came from.
Garters themselves were originally used for the practical reasons of keeping a lady’s stockings securely in place on each leg. Before there were pantyhose, knit or silk stockings were worn on each leg, but they would easily fall down because elastic had yet to be invented. Therefore, garters with ties were commonly used to hold up the stockings on the leg.
Wedding garters and wedding garter ceremonies became popular during the Middle Ages in England and throughout Europe. Symbolizing a bride’s purity, the groom would remove the wedding garters from his bride’s legs on their wedding night before they consummated their union for the first time. During this time, it was commonly thought that having a piece of the bride’s clothing was good luck, so wedding guests would often tear pieces of fabric from her wedding gown after the ceremony. This could get quite animated and one would imagine quite frightening for the bride, so the brides began offering up their wedding garters instead. These were the most sought after items of the bride because of their symbols of purity and fertility, so they were regarded highly and thought to bring with them good luck.
In some customs, the newly married bride and groom would be escorted to the wedding bed and the group would not leave until the clothes of the couple were removed. After the groom removed the wedding garter, he would toss it out to the crowd and the couple would finally be left alone for their first night together. In other cultures, wedding guests would sneak into the bedroom of the couple after they had retired and the guests would pick up the strewn stockings, garters, and undergarments from the floor and thrown them at the couple. It was considered good luck to get the garter to hit the head or hang from the nose of the bride or groom. Other variations of this custom had the single men of the town racing from the church to the bride’s house where the first to arrive would be the winner of the wedding garter.
The desire to possess wedding garters became so popular that brides would often be attacked after the wedding by drunken wedding guests as they trampled her trying to get to the garter first. In an attempt to protect new brides from the frenzy of an attack at their own weddings, grooms became responsible for removing the wedding garters from their new brides and throwing them into the crowd of single men. It is from here that the traditional wedding garter ceremony is derived from. As a result, the single women wanted something of good luck from the bride as well, so the custom of throwing the wedding bouquet also began.
It was thought that the lucky single man who caught the wedding garter would become the next to marry. Sometimes he would take the garter to the woman he wished to marry and placed it on her leg in hopes of her soon becoming his new bride. Other customs had the winner of the wedding garter placing it in his hat and wearing it around until he found his future bride. It was also a common belief that the man who caught the wedding garter and the woman who caught the bridal bouquet would end up marrying each other.
While the basic meanings of the wedding garter ceremony remain intact, it has definitely become tamer and safer for the bride. Many brides will choose to wear two wedding garters, one to be tossed to the single men and one to be removed by her husband on their wedding night.
