6 wedding traditions that are overrated, according to wedding planners

• In the US, common wedding traditions include the bride wearing white and guests throwing rice.
• However, some traditions have lost their appeal in modern times.
• Wedding planners told BI that garter and bouquet tosses are overrated.

It's no secret that weddings are expensive. In 2024, the average cost of a wedding in the US is $33,000 — a 14% increase from 2023's $29,000, reported Zola, an online wedding registry, planner, and retailer.

With these costs, many couples are choosing to rethink their wedding-day priorities, especially post-pandemic, forgoing tradition in the name of comfort and cost.

BI spoke with three wedding planners to learn which traditions have lost or are losing their appeal. Here's what they said.

Sleeping apart the night before the wedding

The tradition of spending one's wedding eve apart stems from marriage's roots as a contractual obligation rather than a romantic one, Brides reported. Keeping the couple apart until the wedding was a way to ensure the bride's virginity and create some mystery before the ceremony, as many unions were arranged.

But in 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that nearly half (48%) of adults in the US believe couples who live together before marriage have a better chance of having a successful relationship.

So, with more couples living together before tying the knot, the tradition has lost some appeal.

"You don't need to change that dynamic of your relationship for one day," Lara Mahler, founder and owner of The Privilege Is Mine, told BI. "So it's like, wake up next to your partner. Also, why pay $1,000 for a hotel suite, you know, so that one person can stay in there?"

"Eat breakfast the way that you do together. If you like to work out together, go work out," she added. "Do those things that will make you feel comfortable and give you that sense of security."

Brides feeling forced to wear white

The white wedding dress tradition was popularized nearly two centuries ago when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840. Before her fashion statement, most brides wore colorful dresses that could be worn for other occasions, Vanity Fair reported. Conversely, brides who wore white did so as a symbol of wealth because it denoted their dresses could be cleaned.

Although white remains the primary color for bridalwear, more brides are beginning to favor color or other traditional variations like ivory and blush.

"We'll see a lot of white dresses, which I think is a nice tradition," said Jennifer Taylor, founder and creative director of A Taylored Affair. "But if someone says that they don't really wear white ever and it just doesn't feel like them, wearing white, I say, 'Then don't wear white. Let's find something fabulous that you feel amazing in.'"

She estimated that about 15% of brides she works with choose a color other than white.

Bridesmaids wearing matching dresses

Bridesmaid dresses can be a major point of contention when planning a wedding, especially for couples with large wedding parties.

That's why Lauren Zizza, founder of Lauren Zizza Events, recommends letting bridesmaids choose dresses they feel most comfortable in.

"I think that women especially are self-conscious about their bodies, and no woman would look the same in any dress that a bridesmaid would have to wear," she said.

Instead, she recommends letting bridesmaids choose their own shape or style, perhaps in a color selected by the bride.

"It photographs really well, too," Zizza added. "Everyone has different personalities and different styles and that shows through in a wedding party."

Walking down the aisle with only your father

In line with marriage's roots, fathers walking their daughters down the aisle once represented a transfer of ownership.

While some brides still follow tradition, others have looked for ways to reinvent that portion of the ceremony by walking in with their mothers and fathers, other family members, or alone.

"It's a nice tradition when you have a good relationship with your father," Taylor said. But those who don't can "end up with a lot of guilt."

"It's turmoil, having to think, 'Do I have him walk me down the aisle anyway? Do I not? What do I do?' So again, it's to each their own," she said.

Another untraditional option couples are beginning to favor is walking into the ceremony together.

Mahler said, "The symbol to that is we are walking — we are making this decision — together. They're walking down the aisle together."

So there are ways to customize the traditions to fit your family's needs and make it special.

Tossing the garter

There's a lot to unpack with this wedding tradition. Per The Knot, a bride's garter has been a symbol of good luck since the Middle Ages, so it became customary to throw it to guests. However, since garters were traditionally worn to keep up stockings, they could also represent a bride losing her virginity.

Over time, the garter toss has become the male equivalent of the bouquet toss, but both have largely lost their appeal, with some couples now viewing the traditions as unnecessarily gendered, and even embarrassing.

"People don't even usually bring it up as an option. They don't even have any interest in doing it," Taylor said.

"But if I have a client say they want to do a garter toss, I say, 'OK, let's make it happen,' because it's about them and what they want. If a client says, 'Do I need to do a garter toss?' I say, 'Absolutely not. You absolutely do not need to do a garter toss. If you'd like to do one, I'm happy to facilitate that, but it's totally not something anyone's gonna miss, or you're gonna think that you wish you should have done in 25 years,'" she added.

And tossing the bouquet

Similarly to the garter toss, a bride's bouquet was considered good luck, so she'd throw it to the unmarried women in attendance with the idea that whoever caught it would be the next to wed.

However, in modern times, the tradition has faded. Mahler estimated that she'd only done five bouquet tosses in her eight years as a wedding planner.

Zizza said, "I think nowadays, especially in a post-COVID world, people don't go according to order or according to plan. So implying that catching the bouquet would make you the next one to get married is just very, very silly."

Taylor agreed that it was an outdated tradition.

"To me, it feels like singling out single women who are already getting asked all the time when they're going to find 'the one,' or when they're going to get married, which they're probably thinking about all the time anyway," she said. "So to put the pressure on these women, it seems … yeah, it's not my favorite."

The most important thing, though, is the couple's happiness.

"It is not my job to judge or make assumptions," Mahler said.

"I'm not going to be the wedding planner that's like, 'No, don't do that, that's stupid,' but I also just want to let people know that there are alternative ways of doing things so if they're opting to do this because they don't know any other way, then it's my job to tell them what those other ways are," she said.

Taylor added, "It's putting a spin on some of these traditions that can make it fun."

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