I was 12 or 13 years old before I attended a wedding where the groom removing the bride’s garter and throwing it to the unmarried men in attendance—a counterpoint to the bride’s bouquet toss—was done.
I’d never heard of or seen the tradition until I attended a cousin’s wedding in Connecticut.
The wedding garter toss tradition varies from region to region. But the basic premise is it that takes place during the reception. Usually the bride sits in a chair with the groom kneeling before her.
The groom ducks under the bride’s gown to remove a garter from around her leg using his hands—or in sometimes teeth. He then tosses the garter to all the unmarried men in attendance and whoever catches it will get married next.
In some places, the man who catches the garter places it on the leg of the woman who caught the bouquet.
Because of the sexual overtones, many modern couples have eliminated the garter toss tradition entirely.
A newlywed turned to the “Am I The A**Hole” (AITAH) subReddit for feedback after his wedding reception garter toss was turned into a prank on him.
Similar to AITA, the AITAH subReddit allows posters to ask for advice and post about ending romantic relationships—both things that are banned on AITA. However there are no official voting acronyms and no final judgment given.
JacksonRyder2025 asked:
“Wife says I need to get over it, but I can’t stop obsessing over a prank that ruined my wedding experience and left me furious?”
The original poster (OP) explained:
“I had an amazing wedding experience that was completely ruined by a prank my wife and friends played during the garter removal.”
“During the reception, we were doing all of the usual wedding games. Eventually, I was told it was time to do the garter removal.”
“As everyone gathered around us in the middle of the dance floor, my wife was sitting in a chair and my friends brought out a blindfold and told me I would be doing the garter removal blindfolded.”
“I should have been suspicious at their grins, but I’d had some drinks, wasn’t suspecting anything, put it on, and tried to be a good sport about it, as everyone seemed like they were having a great time, myself included.”
“As soon as I was blindfolded, however, my wife slipped out of the chair and was replaced by one of my groomsmen. He’s a friend of the family I’ve grown up with.”
“But I would not say we’re close. Now, I literally cannot stand him, although he’s not a bad guy other than my anger at this prank.”
“Sitting in the chair in place of my wife, my groomsman was in shorts with the garter around his thigh. My wife stood behind him and was talking to me as they walked me over, to keep me fooled into thinking it was her.”
“On their instructions, I got down on my knees and began reaching for what I thought were my wife’s legs. Once I found the leg, I found the garter and began pulling it down.”
“But at that moment I heard my wife saying, ‘With your mouth! With your mouth!’ So I leaned forward and grasped the garter belt in my mouth, to the shrieks and applause of the crowd.”
“With the garter in my teeth, I pulled it down his leg, and then my wife actually came around to help me get it over his shoe because it got stuck.”
“Once I had the garter, they told me to stand up and take off my blindfold. When I did, I was smiling, because I thought I’d been a good sport and everyone was laughing so hard it seemed like everyone was having a great time.”
“But when I took off the blindfold, everyone burst into even louder laughter. For a moment, the entire energy of everyone at the wedding was focused on nothing besides laughing at me, at me being the sole butt of the joke.”
“It felt awful.”
“I was furious. I wanted to say and do a million different things. But I didn’t.”
“It was the wedding planner who originally proposed the idea. She had done it at other weddings apparently and she coached my wife and friends on how to do it, to drape her dress over his lap, and to stand behind him talking to me.”
“For some reason, I just felt that pretending it wasn’t a big deal was the best defense, that showing anger would be confirming how badly I’d just been humiliated for their delight, and that would have made my humiliation all the worse.”
“So I sucked it up, slept walked through the rest of the wedding reception while doing my best to keep a smile on my face. My wife could tell I was stunned, but she kept on going too.”
“She definitely had no idea how badly I was taking it. Everyone was standing around us and we couldn’t talk openly about how I felt, at least not without ruining everything, and I didn’t know whether I wanted to go there after all the effort and money put into the wedding.”
“And I kept sucking it up the next day at the brunch and for most of the next week through most of our honeymoon. At some point, I told myself that my wife didn’t mean to hurt me and there was no reason to ruin her wedding memories by telling her that my experience had been ruined.”
“But then at the end of our honeymoon, I had had a few drinks, and I just couldn’t help it. And once I started talking to her about it, I just went off.”
“I told her it was trashy, that it hurt, if not destroyed, my trust and sense of intimacy towards her. I was harsh and got carried away.”
“After at first apologizing a bit, she got upset and left me sitting out there. I think I just kept going becuase I felt hurt and wanted to maybe make her feel bad as well, to be honest.”
“Since then, it’s been a difficult subject. I’ve told her I don’t want to hear about the wedding.”
“I don’t want to write thank you notes or look at pictures. If it was tomorrow, I wouldn’t make plans to celebrate our anniversary.”
“My wife and I have a lot of strengths in our relationship, but I just can’t stop thinking about this and the feeling when I took off that blindfold. I literally cannot stop my mind from replaying it over and over, and I get mad again every time.”
“And perhaps the worst part of it is that it’s all recorded. We had a professional photographer shooting a video.”
“And in the video, I see at least four other people recording it on their phones.”
“Watching the video, I find myself looking at the laughing faces of family and friends in the video, and there’s a part of me—that I’d never act on—that wants nothing more than to punch them all in their faces.”
“The fact I know that these videos are out there makes it feel like it’s constantly happening to me.”
“My wife says that she’s sorry, that she thought I would take it better and laugh it off, and that I need to move on.”
“I think maybe I am the a**hole. No good is coming from obsessing over this. But I literally cannot let it go.”
“I find myself coming up with reasons to be angry. I tell myself sometimes it was assault because I was tricked into putting my mouth on another man’s leg without my consent.”
“But I think that’s just rationalizing my anger. I don’t know.”
“AITA for refusing to let it go?”
Some Redditors weighed in by using the AITA voting acronyms:
- NTA – Not The A**hole
- YTA – You’re The A**hole
- NAH – No A**holes Here
- ESH – Everyone Sucks Here
Redditors decided the OP’s feelings were justified.
“OP, you need to call that wedding planner and tell them what a negative experience you had, and let them know that you will not recommend them to anyone based on what happened.” ~ StarshipCaterprise
“Agreed. The sooner this planner stops suggesting this ‘prank’ to any more of their future customers, the better.”
“OP had a sour experience but managed to keep it in so as not to spoil the day further, but some groom down the road might be a lot worse at holding back their restraint and causing a scene that actually COULD ruin the wedding for more than just him.”
“It’s a sh*tty prank that isn’t thought through enough to actually involve everyone, instead painting a target on the groom for embarrassment.” ~ rothrolan
“I would want the wedding planner to deeply understand that ruining a wedding experience for the bride or the groom means they absolutely suck at their job.” ~ sahie
“Add an online review about that. Warn other grooms. They’re not repeat customers, so the ‘spoiler’ won’t bother them one bit.” ~ hardly_ethereal
“Flip the genders, and have the woman blindfolded on the chair, while some dude that isn’t her husband puts his face between her legs and removes the garter with his mouth….”
“How much you wanna bet it is called assault and not a prank? That’s some fairly intimate contact, without consent.” ~ gdwrench01
“NTA, pranks at weddings are cruel and rude. But I do think you should have talked sooner to her about it, instead of letting it fester like you did and then blowing up at her.” ~ twilight9449
“NTA. If you smashed cake in her face for the laughs, what would her reaction have been?” ~ StandardAble2003
After reading comments, the OP responded:
“Wow. Thank you for all the responses. I’m digesting and I have to say I’m genuinely feeling better just sharing this even if some of you don’t think I’m in the right.”
“I’m definitely not as angry as I was when I wrote this, so there’s that. Although it does come and go.”
“In response to some of the questions:”
“He was wearing his same groomsman shirt and coat but had changed into shorts, a nylon stocking, and flip flops.”
“My groomsman is now my brother-in-law because he’s married to my wife’s older sister. What I meant to say is that he’s a good guy, we grew up together, and I like him, but I didn’t consider him a best friend at the time.”
“And now I’m no longer even thinking of him as a friend, in large part because I’m mad at him. I don’t think there was a reason they picked him other than he’s thin like my wife.”
“I believe my wife when she says she thought it would be funny and that I wouldn’t mind. I just don’t think she thought of it from my perspective when it came to concluding this was a funny thing to do.”
“Sometimes I tell myself this is what I’m mad about. It keeps changing really.”
“A lot of people have asked what I expect my wife to do about it now besides apologize. I don’t have a good answer to that and need to think about what that means.”
“I think this is why I get so mad about it—I don’t know what can be done to take away that feeling of taking off the blindfold, seeing him instead of her, everyone breaking out laughing at me, looking up to see her laughing at me, realizing I was the butt of the joke, and everyone had been laughing at me instead of along with me the whole time.”
“But what do I want now? I don’t know. Maybe there’s nothing I want other than to forget about it, and when I think about it, part of me wants to be a good sport, and part of me gets so mad, and I can go either way. I hate it.”
Some events are (usually) once in a lifetime.
Using such an occasion to play a prank, one that deliberately humiliates the person the event is for, is just cruel. It also robs them of their happy memories of that day.