Why Does the Bride Throw Bouquet at her Wedding?

On the wedding day, the bride holds flower bouquets in her hands walking down towards aisle for her wedding with everyone's eyes on her. These flower bouquets will relax the bride and distract her from the nervousness and make her feel comfortable. In recent years, holding flower bouquets has become a tradition in the U.S and U.K. And another traditional feature of this bouquet is that, bride throws flower bouquet over her shoulders towards her back in the reception and the unmarried women who are standing at the back of her will try to catch that bouquet. The woman who catches the bouquet is said to be the next one to get married. This means bouquet represents luck for unmarried women.

Actually, this custom originated in medieval Europe, a bride never expected to see her wedding dress again in those days because the dress was considered as a good luck for other women, a type of fertility charm. After the wedding, unmarried women chase the bride and ripped her dress into pieces and leaving her in tatters. As the years passed, dresses became more expensive and it became a tradition for women to keep them either as a memento or to pass on to a daughter for her wedding day. In order to distract the ripping of the dresses of the brides, other objects are began to be thrown. Among the objects, flower bouquet became the most traditionally thrown object. The wedding bouquet is particularly suited to this use, as flowers symbolize fertility, and as perishable items, they are not something the bride would wish to keep. The bouquet is also a safer item to throw.