Wedding Bouquet Throwing Tips

As with many long standing wedding traditions, modern brides are often deciding against throwing the bouquet, and are asking the question, "is the bouquet toss really necessary?"

To help you decide whether throwing the bouquet should feature in your wedding, here are a few hints and tips.

• Check your guest list to see how many single women you have coming to the wedding. If you have a large group of single women, the bouquet toss can be really good fun; if there are just two middle aged spinsters fighting over the bouquet it can be just plain embarrassing.

• Wait with the bouquet toss until the party is in full swing, the drinks are flowing, and your guests are up and dancing, but don’t leave it too late or some of the single ladies may have gone home. Traditionally the bride should throw her bouquet as she leaves the reception, but this only works if you are planning to make a formal exit fairly early on.

• Make a real feature of the bouquet toss by choosing an appropriate song, possibly something about single or independent women, and having the DJ announce that all the unmarried girls should take to the dance floor.

• You can combine the bouquet toss with throwing the garter for true impact. Have the single woman that catches the bouquet dance with the single man that catches the garter, but choose a funny song so that nobody takes it too seriously.

• Check with your florist whether they will include a throwing bouquet for free with your real bouquet. This has two advantages in that it stops your expensive bridal bouquet from getting ruined and it can be made to be more robust so that it doesn’t fall apart when it is thrown. The downside of having a throwing bouquet is that the lucky lady who catches it might be disappointed to get a cheap copy of your bouquet, rather than the bridal bouquet itself.

• It may sound silly to practise throwing the bouquet, but it’s not something you do every day and you’ll feel a bit foolish if you launch it over your head and it lands just behind your heels. Try to find something of a similar weight, or possibly even buy a cheap bunch of flowers and have a trial run in your garden.

• You may want your maid of honour or your sister to be the next one to walk down the aisle, but trying to aim your bouquet so someone specific catches it rarely works. Rather than trying to have a contrived bouquet toss, just give the lady in question your bouquet. If you are having a bouquet toss, try simply to aim your bouquet into the middle of the crowd of single ladies and let cupid do the rest.

Many brides feel that the bouquet toss is a lovely tradition that should be part of their wedding. However, if you really don’t want to include it there are plenty of other things you can do with your bouquet such as having it preserved, giving it to your mother or maid of honour, or having a bouquet dance where the bouquet is presented to the guests that have been married the longest.