Monday, March 14, 2011

Beyond the Rehearsal Dinner: The Groom's Role in Wedding Custom

By Ann Daniels


Although the focus of wedding festivities is commonly on the bride, the growing popularity of the two ring ceremony has also put other customs & traditions for grooms at center stage.

Wedding rings for men, though quite popular & almost regarded as standard these days, have only been widely used since the 40s when many young couples were separated by World War II.

It was one big step from no men's wedding rings at all to plain gold bands for everyone, and since then many more leaps have been made to result in a diverse and interesting men's wedding ring selection on the market. Today's jewelers offer a great variety of gold rings, platinum rings, tungsten wedding bands, palladium wedding rings, and many other styles of gold, tungsten, or platinum jewelry in varying shapes and designs.

The garter toss is a groom's wedding custom that is often the subject of dispute. Some brides and/or groooms find it tacky and refuse to participate at all, while others make it a raucous and risque part of the reception along with funny dances and games. The best approach, perhaps, is to find moderation between the two; for example, the bride will wear an extra garter closer to her knee than the real garters, and the groom will take care not to push her dress too high to get it.

The groom's cake is an additional entertaining custom for weddings and has origins in the southern U.S. -- as the story goes if the single women in attendance slept that night with some of the groom's cake under their pillows, they'd dream of who they'd marry. This is a fun bit of superstition similar to the bouquet toss, and can be personalised to express the groom's or couple's interests in very creative ways.

Clearly, it's not just rehearsal dinners and bachelor parties anymore-- there are a number of wedding traditions and contemporary practices that put the groom in the spotlight.




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