Where did the garter toss come from?

The story goes that medieval guests tore pieces off the bride's dress for luck, so the groom threw her garter to the crowd to save the gown, or to prove the marriage was consummated. It is told at almost every reception where a garter comes off. Nobody has ever produced a medieval source for it. The Knot itself concedes "there is little evidence to back up either of the theories."¹

What actually happened in 1698

There was a garter custom, and it was rowdier than the myth. Henri Misson, a Frenchman touring England in 1698, wrote it down. "When bed-time is come," he reported, "the bride-men pull off the bride's garters, which she had before untied, that they might hang down, and so prevent a curious hand coming too near her knee. This done, and the garters being fastened to the hats of the gallants, the bride-maids carry the bride into the bed-chamber."² Then came the flinging of the stockings. The attendants sat at the foot of the bed and threw the couple's stockings backward over their heads; if a maid's throw landed on the groom, "it is a sign she will quickly be married herself."² A hot posset of milk, wine, eggs and spice was served to the couple in bed, "who swallow it down as fast as they can, to get rid of so troublesome company."²

Samuel Pepys heard the tail end of this world from his own chamber on 3 February 1662: "great noise of mirth at Sir William Batten's, tearing the ribbands from my Lady and him."³ Three years later, at a grand wedding, he did his part with more decorum: "I kissed the bride in bed, and so the curtaines drawne with the greatest gravity that could be, and so good night."⁴

Then two hundred years of nothing

The bedding customs faded with the century. What did not happen next is a groom flinging a garter across a reception hall. Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, a fashion historian who went looking, is direct: "I haven't found any evidence of a staged garter toss happening at a wedding before the mid-1950s."⁵ Her theory of where it came from is the wartime stage. Burlesque and USO entertainers "cheekily flung their garters into the delighted crowds of young men," and the gesture came home with them.⁵ By the sixties the magazines were calling it tradition. Pantyhose arrived in 1959 and ended the garter as an everyday garment, which is why the one at a wedding now has to be bought for the purpose.¹

Who still does it

Fewer people every year. The Knot's 2017 study of more than twelve thousand brides found 37 percent did a garter toss; a planning survey had the intent figure at 33 percent in 2018, down from 41 two years before.⁶⁷ The bouquet toss is going the same way: 31 percent of newlyweds did one in 2023, thirteen points down from 2019.⁸ Brides told Good Morning America why in one word: awkward.⁶

Why your mother cares

If your grandmother married in the fifties, the garter was still something she wore every day, and the toss was brand new, a bit of wedding-night humor moved out to the dance floor. By your mother's wedding it was a fixed set-piece with a chair and a song. She is not asking you to keep a medieval rite. She is asking whether the reception will have the bit where everyone laughs. That is a fair question, and there are other bits.