3/17/11

Spotlight on Grooms: Wedding Day Traditions for Men

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 bands for men, though very popular and almost considered standard these days, have only been in wide use since the 1940s when many 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 reception custom that is sometimes the subject of disagreement. Some brides and/or groooms find it tacky & decline to take part at all, while others make it a raucous and risque portion of the reception along with comical songs and activities. The best approach, perhaps, is to find moderation somewhere between the two; for example, the bride might wear an extra garter nearer to her knee than the real ones, and the groom should 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.

As you can see, it's not just rehearsal dinners and bachelor parties anymore-- there are a number of wedding traditions and new customs that put the groom in the spotlight.




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