The Bride's Bouquet: Significance and Practical Advice

The ancestral significance of the bride's bouquet stands in the old belief that the smell of flowers banishes the evil spirits, bringing good luck and prosperity to the one who wears it.
In Ancient Rome, both the groom as well as the bride each wore a wedding bouquet that symbolized fertility and the entrance into a "new life".


To these general symbols, is added the significance of the flowers used in the bride's bouquets, or their colors. At present, it is however very difficult to find a unanimously accepted meaning for each flower.
A simple search on Google will show you that we are right. Anemones, for example, mean either fragility or anticipation, or even unshared love, depending on the link you choose to click on. There are, however, beyond the lack of trust in what we read about the flowers' significance, an unanimously accepted symbolism for the most often used flowers (in life and in literature, perhaps).
Probably if you have to associate the first word that comes to your mind with "lily" you say "purity" or something like that. It is the truth that there is such a significance impregnated in the collective mind that "attests" the association lily - purity. Also, the rose or orchid are flowers of obvious distinction and elegance. Beware, avoid, for the same reasons of "collective mind", the calla lily which has a morbid meaning.


In the end it does not matter so much the general significance of flowers, as it matters the meaning that they have for you both. Maybe at your first meeting your loved one offered you a white rose and you want to have a bouquet of white roses ... or or freesias, or tulips ... All flowers have their beauty and their delicacy. What is important is which ones are the most beautiful for you. Choosing flowers for the bridal bouquet is actually more a matter of taste than of convention.
The bouquets should be ordered in time, but it is the godmother's job is to do it.
As a bride will have to agree with your godmother upon your bouquets and to decide together what kind of bridal bouquet you will have, in order for her to order it in due time for you.
It is important for it to be picked up the morning of the wedding day, so as not to have any surprise with flowers fading.

Regarding wedding traditions, one of the most popular tradition is throwing the bouquet. This is done at the exit from church (less frequently) or after having the cake at the restaurant (usually).
The women who are not married yet stand behind the bride. Superstitions say that the one who will catch the bouquet thrown by the bride, is the one to marry next.