Are you next? Am I next!?

Let's reflect on this whole "catching the bouquet" thing for a moment. As I understand it, it's customary for the bride to throw her bouquet into a group of all the unmarried, female guests at her wedding. The idea is that whoever catches the bouquet is destined to be the next one to be married. When I was a little girl, I always thought of how magical it would be to catch the bouquet and know that I would be one karmic step closer to my own big day. Having just recently returned from a wedding, it seems that attitudes towards this age old wedding tradition may be changing.

Perhaps it's a sign of the times. Perhaps cynicism is winning. Perhaps it was because we were in California and everything works a little bit differently there. Whatever the case may be, my first bouquet toss experience was nothing like I (or my 10 year-old self) expected it to be. To be fair, I have been to a couple other weddings. However, I was either too young or, in one recent and much more amusing case, too drunk to participate in the gaggle of single girls grasping for that iconic floral symbol of marital hope.

Then came Hilary and Josh's wedding. Sometime after the mountain top ceremony and before the barefoot dancing to a gypsy jazz band, word spread through the crowd that Hilary was getting ready to throw the bouquet. Personally, I wasn't all that thrilled to join the throng. Having no boyfriend/fiance/male life partner to speak of, I didn't really feel like robbing some other, more relationship-ly inclined girl of her chance to be "next."

What I quickly realized is that none of the other girls around were too keen on it either. After lots of huffing from us and lots of prodding from the aunts and mothers in attendance, we assembled one of the most lackluster bands of bouquet-catchers in history. I thought I had positioned myself well. I stood in the back and way off to the side. I was behind tall people. I refrained from making eye contact with the Hilary in case she mistook my apathy for quiet desperation. Then the moment came. Purple calla lillies and orange rosebuds were flying through the air. Time really did slow down (that part of the stereotype is absolutely true). I breathed a sigh of relief after taking stock of the bouquet's trajectory and deciding it was definitely headed right at the girl in front of me.

That was until she turned into Keanu Reeves.

It a move we had all only ever seen in the Matrix trilogy, this girl simultaneously bent backwards and twisted to the side. I swear her hair brushed the ground. I guess there is something to be said for all the yoga those hippie girls do. The projectile in question sailed over her right hip and smacked on the ground at my feet. My second-hand Catholic guilt and neurosis automatically took over and I mindlessly scooped up the flowers so A) Hilary wouldn't be disappointed when she turned around and B) because you really shouldn't let nice things like that hit the ground. Thinking that all the symbolism and voodoo had been beaten out of it, I was surprised when I was met with hooting, hollering, and the mad flash of the photographer's camera in my face. I think I was too dazed to say anything but "It doesn't count right?" over and over again.

Note the Deer-in-the-Headlights expression