love meets tradition - the bouquet

Whether you decide to have a traditional or non-traditional wedding, every element about a wedding is deeply rooted in some sort tradition and symbolism. For this first installment of the Love Meets Tradition series, I'm going to talk about why we see brides carrying and tossing bouquets.

From Style Me Pretty/Photography by Marta Locklear

Carrying and then tossing a bouquet is a tradition that stems from England. Back then, the bouquets weren't what we're all used to seeing today. Brides traditionally would carry bouquets of garlic, fruit blossoms, herbs or even grains. These elements are varying symbols of prosperity or things that meant to drive away evil spirits. Bouquets have since evolved to an arrangement of flowers - which are much prettier but still have important symbolic meanings.

From Martha Stewart Weddings/Style Me Pretty

At a wedding, women would try to rip pieces of a bride's dress in hopes that the bride's luck would rub off on them and they would would be the next to get married. As attendants to the brides, bridesmaids wore dresses and carried bouquets to try to fool people and be the bride's decoy. And in an effort to escape the grabby hands, the bride would break off and give pieces of her bouquet away, or toss her bouquet and run away. This explains why we've all heard that the girl who catches the bouquet is the next one to get married!

From Caroline Tran/The Polka Dot Bride

The bouquet toss is always fun at weddings. But as an alternative to a bouquet toss, there is the bouquet "hand-off" where the couple chooses a close friend or relative who is engaged and hands off the bouquet as a gesture of congratulations and good luck for their own journey to marriage.

From Sparkle and Hay

Nowadays, you'll see that brides will often having their florist provide a "tossing" bouquet. Tossing bouquets are usually a smaller replica of the bride's actual bouquet. During the reception, its always nice to have the tossing bouquet on display at the cake table. Recently, I've been seeing what's called a "break-apart" tossing bouquet. The florist will purposely build a tossing bouquet that will break apart easily into 2 or 3 pieces once tossed so that more than just one lucky lady catches the bouquet.

From The Babs Blog

There you have it - the tradition of the bouquet! I think next time we should talk about the different types of bouquets. You'd be surprised to know what kind of types and shapes there are.

Until we meet again...