What's with garters??

Whenever I've gone to a wedding, my least favorite part was the garter toss; the groom slowly, provacatively making his way up under his bride's dress in front of all the guests, taking a portion of her private under garments, and then throwing it to a rowdy group of single guys! It always seemed sooo inappropiate to me. So when I found myself searching for a garter, I had not clue as to why this was expected of me as a bride. I did not want Isaac partially undressing me in front of my friends and family ... maybe I'm being dramatic, but it's the principle of the matter. So this got me thinking ... Where did this tradition come from??
After some, by no means deep, research, I came across the answers I was looking for and history, to my surprise, is even more horrifying than I thought!! Now, there are many renditions and I have no clue which ones are correct but they are all frightening. Apparentely friends, family and guests used to escort the bride and groom to their marriage bed (sooo creepy!!) and the single guys made a game out of tossing the bride's garter at the groom's nose. It was beleived that whoever landed it on his nose would be the next to get married. Then it was thought to be good luck to be the guy to removed the garter from the bride's leg, but over the years the men became more and more enthusiastic to help the bride out of her wedding clothes (alot of times ripping her dress to shreds!!) that she would get trampled and eventually the garter was thrown at the mob of crazy guys as a distraction to keep them from pummeling the poor girl!! (you can read more about it at www.eyecatchingcreations.com/garterhistory.htm)

After I read this, I realized I looked like this for about a whole minute until I finally recovered...

If I was a bride back in the Dark Ages, I would have been terrified!!! It made me realize that maybe the 21st century version of this tradition is not as awful as I thought it was ... because apparently it could be a whole lot worse!! PS. I got my garter for $6 at Davids Bridal marked down from $24. Ahhh I love a good deal.