When I first started wedding planning, I assumed that brides tossed the actual bouquet during the bouquet toss. I hadn’t been to enough weddings (and am not that observant to begin with, as previously noted), to figure out that the tossed bouquet is much, much smaller than what the bride carries.

At my first meeting with the florist she asked me if I would be needing a toss bouquet.

“A what?”

“A toss bouquet. You know, for the bouquet toss.”

“You don’t toss the actual bouquet?”

“Uh, no. You’d knock someone out with that.”

Indeed. My bridal bouquet weighed about ten pounds. Toss bouquet? Tiny, like a be-ribboned Independence Day sparkler.

Doing a good bouquet toss is a lot harder than it looks. I recommend that future brides practice tossing objects over their heads until they can hit bouquet toss range with reasonable accuracy.

It didn’t help that there were only about six girls participating in the bouquet toss—makes for a much smaller target.

The first toss went way high but only traveled about two feet. As I was not eligible to catch my own bouquet, we tried again.

The second toss went way over everyone’s heads. Over the girls’ heads and over the spectator’s heads.

Finally, the third toss found its way to the back of the group of girls, where one of my friends grabbed it as it hit the ground. Practice makes perfect!

My husband was much better with the garter toss, sling-shotting it over his head straight at the group of guys. Another friend of mine snatched it out of the air with gusto.

Someone snapped a picture of the two lucky catchers with garter and bouquet, looking at each other with comically pained expressions. Awesome.