Are you planning a bouquet or garter toss for your wedding? Not sure whether you want to? You’re not alone. A somewhat surprising number of my clients ask me what I think about doing a bouquet or garter toss. The answer, as with most wedding-related traditions, is that it’s a matter of personal preference.

I haven’t done the math on this, but anecdotally, I would say that about half my clients opt to do both a bouquet and a garter toss. About three-quarters do at least the bouquet toss, and around a quarter of couples don’t do either.

One of my clients is toying with the possibility of doing the garter removal but not the toss. I told them that it could be a bit confusing for their guests, because they will be expecting the toss to follow the removal, but that’s not really a big deal. No one is going to think that the wedding was ruined if they don’t do the garter toss!

Traditionally, these tosses were meant to be a way for some of the wedding couple’s good luck to rub off on the guests. The people who caught the bouquet and garter were supposedly going to be the next to get married. This is why only single/unmarried people are typically called out to the dance floor for the bouquet and garter toss.

This is something to keep in mind when weighing whether or not to do a toss: how many single friends and relatives do you have? If the answer is “not many,” you might want to skip this tradition. The fun of it comes from getting a large crowd out onto the dance floor, and maybe some good-natured jostling to be the one to catch the bouquet or garter. With just a few people out there, it’s less of a spectacle.

If you decide to do a bouquet toss, ask your florist to make you a small “tossing” bouquet. There are two reasons for this:

1) You might want to save your actual bouquet. Maybe you plan to have it preserved intact, or maybe you’re going to dismantle it and have individual stems pressed as a keepsake. You won’t be able to do this if you give away your bouquet.

2) Bridal bouquets are heavy! You could do some serious damage with that bouquet if it hits someone in the face. A small tossing bouquet is easier to toss, easier to catch, and safer.

Etsy is a great place to find garters. Many of them come in sets of two so you can toss one and keep the other as a memento. And if you get a blue garter, you’ve wrapped up your “something new,” “something blue,” and your garter all at once. Wedding multitasking, for the win!

Let me know in the comments if you’re planning to do a bouquet or garter toss. I’m curious to find out how other people feel about this. (And if you want to, tell me which state you live in—I’m curious as to whether there are any geographic influences on this question!)

TL;DR here’s the video version