Jacquie Severs

As it is due to set wedding flower trends for the next ten years, I thought I'd post a detailed account of what the new princess Catherine Middleton carried on her wedding day.

























The bouquet is a shield-shaped wired bouquet of myrtle, lily-of-the-valley, sweet William and hyacinth. The bouquet was designed by Shane Connolly and draws on the traditions of flowers of significance for the Royal Family, the Middleton family and on the Language of Flowers.

The flowers’ meanings in the bouquet are:

Lily-of-the-valley – Return of happiness

Sweet William – Gallantry

Hyacinth – Constancy of love

Ivy: Fidelity; marriage; wedded love; friendship; affection

Myrtle: the emblem of marriage; love.

The bouquet contains stems from a myrtle planted at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, by Queen Victoria in 1845, and a sprig from a plant grown from the myrtle used in The Queen’s wedding bouquet of 1947.

The tradition of carrying myrtle began after Queen Victoria was given a nosegay containing myrtle by Prince Albert’s grandmother during a visit to Gotha in Germany. In the same year, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought Osborne House as a family retreat, and a sprig from the posy was planted against the terrace walls, where it continues to thrive today.

The myrtle was first carried by Queen Victoria eldest daughter, Princess Victoria, when she married in 1858, and was used to signify the traditional innocence of a bride.


Many of these flowers are not widely or easily available in Canada, and if are available are very limited by season. The trend to watch is shield shape (finally, an end to round bouquets!) and the mixture of white delicate flowers. The scent of the bouquet would be lovely as these are primarily garden flowers and the Lily of the Valley in particular would smell sweet and fresh. I've already starting thinking about what substitutes I could use in a bouquet to create this same look and feel with flowers more widely available.