The Traditions of the Wedding Garter

Wedding Garter - tradition

The tradition of the Wedding Garter has its roots in antiquity, though how the tradition is followed depends on where you are. Although the color of the garter is now a matter of personal choice, the original colors were traditionally blue or white.

In North America it is traditional for the bride to wear two garters, and if she wants to remain with tradition, the first Wedding Garter should be blue and the lower one white or ivory. There is more than one story behind this tradition, though they are all relevant to the tradition of the North American bride.

Wedding Garter - superstition

In 14th century Europe it was considered good luck to have a piece of the bride’s clothing, like the Wedding Garter after the wedding. You have to keep in mind that these were the days of burning and hanging of witches, and superstition was very strong. The belief in good luck was not as is it is now – something done for fun with very few people actually seriously believing in luck. These were days in which it was seriously believed that if a witch survived a ducking she must be guilty because the devil helped her survive an impossible situation.

Good luck was seriously prized to the extent that a poor bride could be left with very little clothing after the townspeople had ripped of as many bits of her dress as they could. The situation became so serious that the bride threw pieces of her clothing to the crowds after being wed, including her Wedding Garter. However, this also backfired because the males in the crowd became impatient and tried to remove the garter and other pieces of the bride’s apparel themselves.

Wedding Garter - custom

The groom then stepped in, and it became custom for the groom to remove his bride’s Wedding Garter and throw it to the bachelors while the bride threw her bouquet to the unmarried women. It became regarded as custom that the man and woman who caught these items would be the next to be married – sometimes to each other!

Even earlier in history than this, the Wedding Garter was regarded as being symbolic of the metal girdle worn by women to ensure their virginity, later to become known as the chastity belt. The removal of the garter symbolized the removal of the girdle, and hence the bride’s virginity.

Wedding Garter - choices

In Roman times the color blue was a symbol of faithfulness and purity, and the Roman bride would wear a blue band round the bottom of her dress to represent her purity and virginity. Blue was also the Christian color of purity, not white as it is now. That is the basis of the last item in the well known saying ‘Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue’. The bride’s Wedding Garter can be all of these, but it became traditional for the garter to be blue to represent that blue band at the bottom of the wedding dress that represented purity and fidelity.

As stated earlier, it is traditional in North America for the bride to wear two garters. The top Wedding Garter should correctly be blue to represent purity and faithfulness, replacing the Roman blue band round the wedding dress, and the lower garter of white to represent the virginity of the medieval bride, and also the garter thrown to the unmarried males by the European groom. The blue garter is not thrown to the masses but retained by the groom as a symbol of his wife’s purity and faithfulness to him.

Wedding Garter - placement

Both are worn on the right leg, and above the knee. The bouquet is thrown first to the unmarried women and then the groom removes the Wedding Garter and throws it to the unmarried men. In some communities, the man and woman who catch each, dance with each other after the bridal party has taken the floor at the reception.

It is common now for the bride to make her own garters, which is a fairly simple operation although the choice of material is important. Not for any traditional reasons, but because the Wedding Garter can be a very uncomfortable article of clothing if made of the wrong material. A garter that itches can not only be uncomfortable, but also very embarrassing!










Wedding Garter

Copyright 2007 © Sovco LLC.