Selecting Your Wedding Flowers:
Celebrating A Life of Togetherness
By Maryellen Gor

The Four Steps to Selecting Your Wedding Flowers

So, how do you make this happen? How do you arrange your wedding flowers so that they have meaning to you and your partner?

Step One: Choose the words that are important to you and your partner as you plan your wedding and marriage. What do you want your marriage to represent?
o Love
o Happiness
o Devotion
o Humor
o Other: define your own

Step Two: Which flowers represent the ideas you generated in step one? What elements do you want your marriage to always have?
o Carnation – Pure, deep love
o Forget-me-not – True love
o Stephanotis – Happiness in marriage
o Pink Hyacinth - Play
o Ivy – Fidelity
o Other: Define your own

Step Three: Look at the six areas where flowers can play a role in your wedding: your bridal bouquet, bridesmaid bouquets, table centerpieces, wedding cake, corsages, and boutonnieres. Select the flowers in each of the areas appropriate to your wedding:

Select a bridal bouquet that celebrates this special life moment. Have your florist create a bridal bouquet with flowers that represent what is important to you and your partner in your relationship. Use the list provided earlier that contains wedding flowers and their meanings. You also have an option of visiting www.myteleflora.com where you will find information about flowers in alphabetical order under the heading of flower identification. You can also use a search engine and type in: What do (the name of the flower here) symbolize?

After you have chosen your bridal bouquet, move on to the bridesmaid bouquets. Select flowers for your bridesmaids that celebrate your special relationship with them and how they fit into your life and marriage. Consider flowers of friendship such as chrysanthemums, which mean you are a wonderful friend. Combine them with some beautiful five-star petal stephanotis, which mean happiness in marriage.

Remember that your table centerpieces can also be meaningful. The flowers you select will represent those words that you and your partner want to instill in your marriage, such as happiness and humor. Consider multiple coordinating arrangements if you have more qualities and words than will fit into a single arrangement. Perhaps one table is joy, another passion, and a third everlasting love. Write the names of the flowers and their meanings in calligraphy on a card next to the centerpiece or make it part of the centerpiece.

Don’t forget your wedding cake. If you want to do something a bit different than the traditional wedding cake, have the flowers you and your partner have selected incorporated into the cake’s décor. Every wedding I attended always had a wedding cake with a bride and groom at the top of the cake. That is where I wanted to be different; I wanted flowers on top of my cake instead. So I had the florist make a replica of my bridal bouquet and place it at the top of my wedding cake.

For parents and those special people you wish to honor, choose flowers for the boutonnières and corsages that represent your hopes for your marriage.

Step Four: Revisit what is important to you and your partner and make sure your flowers reflect what your relationship represents to you both. After the wedding and honeymoon, when you have started your life together, you may want to plant a personal garden containing the flowers you chose for your wedding. This serves as a visual reminder of the commitment you and partner have made.

Final Budding Thoughts
Planning a wedding is both exhilarating and stressful. What can you do to make it less stressful? When you select the flowers for your wedding it helps you keep in mind what’s important to you and your partner as you plan a future together. It is one of the most exciting times in your life. You want your wedding to be a memorable occasion; after all, you are celebrating a life of togetherness.

Maryellen Gor is an author, personal development coach, and president of Profits With People, a business consulting company.
To learn more about Growing Your Personal Garden, visit her website at www.wateringcanproductions.com.

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