Where do garter belts come from?

So, I am at a certain holiday party at a certain someone's house, who will not be living at this certain house for much longer because the lease is almost up, and a certain someone pretty forced me to update my blog after I so lovingly frosted his/her eclaires. But being forced isn't so bad a thing. For one thing, I update my blog. Secondly, I rediscovered my blog's password that I will most likely forget again sometime in the near future. Thank goodness for technology.
So we, and when I say we I mean those who were with me and myself including the eclair-making, blog updating enforcer, were at a certain someone's wedding reception, who married a certain someone who a certain someone else has a lot of good stories about which include what this certain someone else thinks is wearing in the wedding photos and what this person dropped in the reception line at the wedding, when a question came up about garter belts. Silly me and my nonsensical nature got curious about the origin of the tradition of flinging the garter and posed the question that is now the title of my blog, "Where do garter belts come from?" This statement didn't exactly match my ponderings but when one is deep in thought, one cannot be expected to speak as fluently as his/her thoughts are flowing. In response, I recieved a wide array of snappy retorts. "Garter belt heaven," and "Well, when two garter belts love each other very much" where the responses that got the most laughter. But nothing leaves an imprint on our minds like the story that the certain someone else previously mentioned told about how much he/she loves the color purple.
Since I am at a party and since forced results are never as good as those carefully and creatively planned over time, I think I will conclude the ramblings of the evening. Sorry for the lack of french vocabulary. How'bout I just give you a french proverb and create a race to see who can give me the correct equivalent expression in english. Here we go.

Vouloir est Pouvoir.

Good luck! Bon chance!

Story Time (it's long and will put you to sleep) - L'Heure d'une Histoire (c'est longue et va te faire dormir)

So here we are - Dec. 15 - and I am finally, after many discussions deliberating about delay, posting my second post. Today marks a special day for many reasons. 1) My old post reached 25 comments, thus I am writing this second post, and 2) I talked with someone from France in France and in French for the first time in about a year. I was quite an experience. Yesterday at work, my supervisor told me that we have an invoice that we need to pay and that we have had some trouble communicating with the vendor - the French vendor. All previous attempts had failed - whether from the language barrier or the long distance separating us, I don't know. But I do know that I am the only one that speaks French in my department and they decided to utilize that asset. So after she broke the news to me, I was excited and nervous. It was hard to get to sleep last night.

SIDE NOTE: Have you ever tried to go to bed at 7:30pm? I did it this past week or so and I must admit - it is quite nice. Pulling on some nice warm socks and bundling up in the covers. Socks are a necessity and I can't sleep with my feet exposed - hence one of the reasons why I am looking forward to McSomethingkins' Christmas present. Thanks in advance, Something.

So I wake up this morning and riffle through my French/English dictionary looking for words I might have to use. I end up bringing it with me to work. I show up 10 minutes early and listen to the French radio just to make sure that I haven't forgotten what it sounds like (that really didn't help because it was news radio and they were talking about something way over my head like politics or something just as annoying that I know little about and even littler French vocabulary). So I give up on that just as my supervisor shows up and says we should get started. So we sit down at the phone and realize that we don't know how to call France. So we spend five minutes trying to figure it out from experimentation, on-line sources, and the University's help line. So we figure it out and dial the number. This lady answers with one of those unreal voices that seem like you are calling some infomercial or talking to an airline stewardess. She was uncannily nice and very clear. The conversation goes fine until we get close to the end and she rattles something off that I am sure she has repeated a million times like she is a car insurance representative or something. I missed it - and all those lessons I learned from the mission to ask if you don't understand something just flew out the window. Hopefully it was unimportant and we get a receipt in the mail.