The season of love has begun, and one of the most popular gifts to give your valentine are flowers. However, flowers, more often than not, are given directly in the bland, tacky supermarket packaging. Gentlemen, y’all need to step up with your bouquets; upgrading store-bought flowers can be as simple as taking an extra 15 minutes to arrange them. On the other hand, ladies, why not turn the tables and get a bouquet for your man? They can like pretty things, too.
Putting thought into a bouquet elevates it so much more and shows your partner that you care, so for a successful gift, make sure to plan out your bouquet before even assembling it. The first step is choosing the main flower. If you don’t know your partner’s favorite flower, here are some popular choices:
Roses are the classic symbol for love and are always reliable. They’re full and rounded, creating a compact look. Lilies are slender and taller, giving more room for greenery, and they can have stronger fragrances than roses. Orchids are more exotic and more elegant; they’re perfect to show sophistication. However, if orchids are too expensive, tulips are also great to show elegance. There are, of course, many other types of flowers, and choosing multiple types of flowers adds variety and interest to the bouquet.
The second step is choosing colors. Red symbolizes passion, white symbolizes purity, pink symbolizes grace, yellow symbolizes happiness and purple symbolizes royalty. Choose up to two colors for the bouquet and make sure the colors don’t clash; a bouquet should be unified.
The third step is preparing filler flowers and greenery. Filler flowers are used to fill gaps between the main flowers. They are often small and simple, and popular choices are baby’s breath flowers or solidago flowers. Baby’s breaths are white, meaning they go well with any colors and help to create a soft, romantic texture. Solidagos are a pop of gold that add volume and an organic feel. Popular choices for greenery include eucalyptus, huckleberry and fern.
Now, we finally start putting the bouquet together.
First, take the flowers out of the cheap clear plastic sleeve and strip the leaves off the stems of the main flowers until only the flower is showing. Start with a main flower, add a filler flower or a second main flower, then some greenery. Keep adding to the bouquet, rotating through the different components and making sure the bouquet is balanced on all sides. Keep in mind that it’s easy to add too much greenery; the flowers should be the main focus of the bouquet.
After reaching your desired size, tie the bouquet together with some string or ribbon. Instead of using clear plastic, use a layer of tissue paper first then a more sturdy paper. Make sure the paper isn’t covering too much of the flowers. Tie again with string or ribbon.
Choosing and planning out the bouquet is the most difficult part, and preparation is simply taking off the leaves on the flowers. Even if you’re only using cheap flowers, filler flowers and greenery elevate the bouquet. Just 15 minutes and a few extra bucks for greenery can go a long way. Gifting a bouquet to someone is a powerful symbol of love, so we should put more care into it.
Roses are a classic symbol of love. It’s been a symbol of love for thousands of years, dating back to ancient Greece and Rome. For roses, a trick professional bouquet stores use is to manually fluff out the petals of the rose. Petals are delicate, so be careful; the result is a fuller-looking rose that seems more lush and fresh. (Photo/Emma Colarte Delgado)
