Feb 13, 2026 By Brad Hundt 5 min read

It was a blustery Saturday night amid a typically blustery Michigan winter. I was attending a wedding reception for a cousin, and was just not getting into the spirit of things.

I was still feeling rundown after having had a cold that I would have put at an 8 in severity on a scale of 1 to 10. Plus, in a couple of days, I was going to be flying to London, having purchased a ridiculously cheap off-season ticket on a British Airways flight as a birthday present to myself. All I wanted was rest, rest and more rest.

The evening was ambling toward the inevitable tossing of the bride’s bouquet for the single women in attendance and the garter belt for the men. Frankly, I just wanted to stay quietly out of sight, but I was urged to join the throng of other single men for the garter belt toss. Reluctantly, I did my duty, and shuffled over. I didn’t catch the garter belt. In fact, according to my sister, I started to walk away while it was still airborne.

The superstition has it that the single man who catches the garter belt at the wedding will be the next to marry, just as the single woman who catches the bouquet will be the next to stroll down the aisle.

Perhaps my slouching reluctance to get that garter belt explains why I didn’t get married soon after. In fact, it took me another 19 years before I was a groom.

Well, in reality, it doesn’t explain at all why I didn’t tie the knot until a couple of decades later. A lot of love and romance is tied up in chance and circumstance, things that are mostly out of our control. But for centuries humans have tried to impose some sense of order and rationality on love, something that Sigmund Freud once described as “a state of temporary psychosis.”

In fact, garter belts and bouquets aren’t the only things the superstitious have glommed onto when it comes to eros. You can add doves, cows, horses, chickens, brooms and flowers to the list.

Superstitions, in many respects, are “a stress control mechanism,” according to Sean Coyne, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington & Jefferson College. Since animals have also demonstrated superstitious behavior, he pointed out that “this is a very ancient mammal trait.”

And superstitions are present in all parts of life. Perhaps a man wears a “lucky tie” to a job interview, or a diehard Pittsburgh Steelers fan puts on a certain jersey on game day, or sits in a certain chair in their living room. Of course, whether someone is offered a job usually hinges on factors other than neckwear, and whether a football soars through the goalposts does not depend on whether Bob in Aliquippa is nestled in his mustard-colored Barcalounger.

“People will think their behavior caused a certain outcome, when the outcome would have happened anyway,” Coyne said.

Given the anxiety and insecurity that can surround love and romance, it’s natural that superstitions would creep into that realm.

“You can’t control it,” Coyne said. “It’s one of the most stressful things.”

Superstitions often arose centuries ago – in fact, the bride tossing her bouquet is the outgrowth of a superstition in Medieval Europe that if guests at the nuptials tore off a piece of the bride’s wedding dress, or were able to snatch away one of the flowers she was carrying, it would bring them luck in love and romance. Since a throng of people tearing at your garment is not typically how most brides would like to wrap up their big day, bouquets were thrown as a diversionary tactic.

Then, a couple of centuries later, the superstition came into being that if a single woman slept with a slice of wedding cake under her pillow, she would dream about her spouse. A much more practical variation had the wanna-be bride putting a piece of mistletoe under her pillow on New Year’s Eve. Yet another variation, this one from Appalachia, recommended putting a lemon peel on a headboard at bedtime to bring love.

Catching some z’s with a wedding cake under your pillow isn’t the only superstition about love and romance that is, shall we say, lacking in practicality. A German superstition had it that if a young, unmarried woman knocked on the door of a chicken coop on Christmas Eve and heard a rooster crow, she would find love in the next 12 months. If not, well, there’s always next Christmas Eve.

A Texas folk tale put forward the notion that if you count 50 white horses, the first fella you shake hands with immediately after will be your future husband. A variation that is said to have developed in Nebraska has it that you should count 99 horses and one white mule, and then the first man you shake hands with will be your husband.

Perhaps the most well-known superstition about love is the so-called “Daisy Oracle.” It’s the plucking of petals one by one, and saying “He (or she) loves me” as one petal is pulled, and “He (or she) loves me not” as the next one falls away. How the object of your affection truly feels about you will be revealed with the last petal.

By and large, we are now more sophisticated than the German maidens who ventured out to the chicken coop on Christmas Eve or the medieval ripping apart wedding gowns. But it seems as long as there is love, there will be superstitions surrounding it.

And they are basically harmless, Coyne believes, “if it’s a way of managing uncertainty or stress.”