Traditional Reception???

I feel you on this, because I was dead set against a garter toss and bouquet toss but FH really wanted it. I didn't like the idea of my single female friends and family being called out, and I'll be damned if my new husband is going to go fishing up my skirt in front of god and everyone!


So, we will invite everyone to participate in the bouquet and garter toss. Single or not, male or female, and if they do catch the bouquet or garter there is a special prize (probably will be a nice spa gift set and a good bottle of alcohol). And I'll take off the garter privately beforehand, or let him take it off quickly by just grabbing it with his hands, not ripping it by the teeth. This way the tradition can happen without all the uncomfortable things that go with it. We also won't be doing any speeches or a grand exit.

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It seems to be very regional or specific to certain age groups. But I personally have never seen, out of the cringe on Youtube, where the groom removes the garter in a distasteful manner. Most grooms participating are very quick and discreet. Also there is no reason for the garter catcher placing it on the leg of the bouquet catcher..as is said on many posts to be very common everywhere but is not done in most circles and is highly inappropriate outside of a frat house.

We skipped:

Garter toss: sexist undertones + cringey to watch

Bouquet toss: didn't want to make the single female guests uncomfortable

Grand exit: our photographer left about an hour before the reception ended

We did do a first dance but not to the whole song, and we asked everyone making speeches to keep them very short.

We skipped bouquet and garter toss. I honestly haven’t been to a wedding in like 3 years who have done those... So I wouldn’t worry about it!

We’re doing some of these.

We are going to do the first dance, but most likely to a shortened song - I agree 3 minutes is way too awkward for me!

Yes to speeches- my sister (MOH) is so excited about her speech that’s it’s worth guests being bored for a minute 😂
Hard NO on the garter toss. Maybe to the bouquet toss, and only because our venue has a balcony to throw the bouquet down to the guests.
Yes to Cake cutting
No to grand exit - our venue is in a hotel, so we are all going to the hotel bar after to keep the party going 🥂

First Dance you could do for less time by having the DJ invite your parents on to the dance floor, then all other couples. First dances can also be short, have the song fade out after a minute. Got my fiancé to agree to dance lessons, so we’ll see how that goes.

You could have the speeches given at the rehearsal dinner which you’d be much more intimate, that’s what my fiancé and I are planning on doing.

For the garter toss I’m with you, that’s just weird. Bouquet toss you don’t have to do at all, I don’t know about you but I want to keep my bouquet to dry and put in a shadow box or something.

You should totally do a cake cutting if you want, this all about what you and your fiancé want to do

Grand exit can be hard because it would mean your leaving before most of your guests., which is partly you my fiancé and I decided not to do it. The only reason I would have it is if you wanted to do colored smoke or sparklers for your photos.

We are doing a last dance instead of a first dance. I figure that by the end of the night, people will be leaving/ not paying attention and we will have had some drinks.

Not tossing anything.

Fiance is conflicted about cake cutting. I said as long as I get to eat some cake, I don't really care either way.

We are doing a private send-off instead of a grand exit. We will just have our wedding party and maybe family participate. Since we are doing almost ALL of our pics before the ceremony, we will do this during cocktail hour.

We are cutting out the garter and bouquet toss. Neither FH or I are big fans of it and when I asked what he thought about not doing it he agreed with me. Everything else I think we will do. My parents are hosting so I know my father wants to make a toast and I can’t wait to hear from my MOH (her and her husband set us up) and FHs best man. I am super nervous about speaking so not sure what we will say to guests, but maybe a short something.
Also thinking of doing something small for cake cutting but we haven’t decided yet how that will go.
As for some non traditional, I am going to dance with my mother after dinner and with some time between father daughter and mother son dances. I think we will also ask my FHs grandfather to say a blessing before dinner altho we both are super religious so I am leaving that decision up to FH. Also not sure if this exactly counts but we got a non traditional guest book I’m SUPER excited about. We are getting married on a mountain so we ordered an engraved, light, 4 ft snowboard off Etsy for people to sign and we will have quilt squares for guests to sign since my grandmother plans to take them and make a quilt for us with everyone’s signatures and we’ll wishes after the wedding!
If you want non traditional and future spouse wants traditional I would try and meet somewhere in the middle. Get rid of some things and keep maybe some of the traditional stuff your spouse really wants. I do understand the all eyes on you for your first dance bc I had similar feelings, but I just keep telling myself all eyes are going to be on FH and I the entire day, so I just need to work through it haha

First Dance: Yup! We're both really excited for this, FH has mentioned several times wanting to take dance classes so we can do more than a sway We're also considering doing parent dances before our first dance so we can transition into an open floor more easily.

Speeches: We don't have a wedding party, so we're not expecting any of these.

Garter Toss/Bouquet toss: I'm not a fan of these. I'm from the Mid-west, so all too often I've seen it get cringey, and I hate dragging single people on the dance floor. So long as none of our family passes between now and the wedding we plan on doing the whole anniversary dance and giving them the bouquet. But we might cut that idea too.

Cake Cutting: I'm planning on baking a chocolate cake with pomegranate buttercream icing (1 small tier) for FH and I to cut, because it's the only thing he's really asked for. Otherwise we're getting artesian cookies for everyone as our desert.

Grand Exit: Nope! Our reception is in the middle of the zoo, and given that I'll stick around to help clean-up I'm not too worried about this.

We're planning to do a short first dance. Haven't decided on speeches, but kinda want to keep them in, since our wedding is small and some folks may want to talk, but we'll probably ask to keep it short.

We're cutting the garter toss. I'm not even going to wear one hahaha. The Bouquet toss we may do, but I don't want it to just be for single women, since I totally agree--it's very weird and antiquated imo. I'm thinking it may be cool to do a bouquet toss for anyone who wants to join (singles, couples, all genders!) if they want to keep the flowers, but I haven't decided (our date is still a long ways off lol!) We're keeping the cake cutting and exit only because our venue is really strict about exit times, so I think this will give everyone a hard stop.

I'm in the same situation - I want less traditional but my FH wants more traditional, so definitely still talking through it all!!!

Good luck on your wedding and congrats!!!

First Dance: We haven't decided on a song yet but my FH has two left feet so this will be interesting

Speeches: My MOH, his Best Man, and we're thinking of others. We can't wait to hear about how others view us lol

Garter Toss: My FH is so excited about this one and it always makes us laugh to see the guys "avoid" the garter lol. Our guests are all very silly and it doesn't make anyone uncomfortable

Bouquet Toss: My bridal party are excited about this and I believe they're going to make it like a 'Hunger Games' joke thing lol

Cake Cutting: If we do this, I don't think I want it announced

Grand Exit: Sprinklers for the cute pics

I'm going off the assumption that your last part - about being a bride who doesn't want traditional but whose FH does - is accurate to your situation.

With that in mind:

First Dance - how do you feel about others being with you? You can either start off for the first few seconds with your new husband and then have the DJ ask people to join you (as others have suggested) or coordinate with special guests to be with you (like your parents). If you choose to do the "start off just us and add people," get some trusted guests in on it before the big day - you might be surprised the "stage fright" people get, and you might end up with no one joining you! If you get some people in on it ahead of time (parents, the wedding party, whoever you know will cooperate) who will 100% bounce up there when the DJ announces it, then others will follow.

Speeches - a great welcome speech would be plenty. No one will miss the speeches. I wish I had told the DJ not to let anyone give any speeches when I got married, because everyone just improvised and they were all horrible except the welcome speech my mom made.

Tosses - a lot of people skip these. No one will miss them. In fact, if your guests are the dancing/party sort, the tosses just serve as a huge interruption, because it makes a bunch of your guests go sit down. Let 'em party their way through.

Grand Exit - honestly, I have no answers for this one. I hate to be a voice of dissention, but I've been to hundreds of weddings, as a guest and as a vendor, and skipping the exit always made things weird. One of three things always happened:
The couple ended up stuck there with chatty guests longer than they wanted, because they didn't have a clear-cut bail out/escape time
The couple just vanished and only a few guests knew why, so most were left at the venue going ??????????
The "no exit" was successful, because the couple still left at a designated time, but they just casually walked out of the venue - but guests were still left scratching their heads because it was weirdly anti-climactic

We're skipping garter toss, bouquet toss, cake cutting (bc I am clumsy and will cry if I ruin our cake), first dance (everyone can start dancing whenever they want, DJ will announce the floor is open and start playing music to get everyone out there), and will probably skip grand exit, unless FH really wants to

Anyone who wants to give a speech is welcome to at ours, but we're doing them after people have had a chance to dig in, so no one is hungry waiting for their food while it happens