Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for the flower industry - it’s our Super Bowl! We spend months preparing for it, and it all starts with flower selection…
Designing flowers for Mother’s Day is a huge deal! We know first-hand, and believe so passionately, that moms deserve the world. We can’t give them the world, but we can give them breathtaking flowers. The stakes are already high (moms deserve the world + stunning flowers), and add to that the fact that it is the busiest weekend of the year for flowers so we are preparing to deliver this caliber of blooms en masse. It’s a tall order, but we’re more than up to the challenge! These are the main factors we consider when selecting the flower varieties that will appear in our exclusive Mother’s Day flower menu:
- Color palette, seasonality, and customer requests
- Hardiness and vase life
- Flower symbolism – the meaning of flowers
Let’s Talk Design, Color Palette and Flower Requests
The number one most requested flower we get in shop is peonies! And they’re only available for about 8 weeks of the year. Guess which holiday falls in that 8-week time span? Ding, ding, ding - Mother’s Day! Because of this happy coincidence, we designed our menu’s color palette and offerings around peonies - specifically coral charm peonies, known for their vibrant coral shade and giant blooms.
In addition to incorporating peonies into the recipes of almost every item on the menu, we added a handful of peony-centric options, deviating from our signature garden-style that incorporates multiple flowers into each design. The peony offerings have been so popular, in fact, that we added new options to this year’s menu.
When it comes to the color palette for the Mother’s Day Menu, we wanted to incorporate the vibrant pink of the peonies, and roll it into shades of peach and lavender. It’s important to us that it feels significantly different than our Valentine’s Day Menu, which also incorporates pink.
Gotta Make Sure it’s a Hardy Party
Flower longevity plays a HUGE role in selecting Mother’s Day flowers for our menu. In general, fresh flowers last an average of a week; more fragile varieties hold for about 3-4 days, and some extra tough blooms can last up to 10 days!
We strive for a vase life of 5-7 days, and select flowers that will collectively make that happen.
Ensuring the flowers that arrive at your door last the desired time-frame ripples all the way back to selecting which flowers we order. Our wholesale flower order for Mother’s Day is about 10x the size of our standard flower order, which means our shops and design warehouse are flush with buckets of blooms! When we receive this large of a flower order, the risk for damage becomes much higher, so we select ingredients that we know can withstand the pressure of volume.
What in Carnation Does This Mother’s Day Flower Mean?
The origin of giving flowers on Mother’s Day seems to have as many roots as an oak tree - a Grecian festival celebrating a mother goddess, an offering to your mother church during lent, a symbol of the often floral-framed Mother Mary to honor motherhood. It is universally agreed upon, however, that the modern symbolism of giving flowers lies in appreciation and love for a mom or mother-figure in your life.
Beyond that, several of the flowers we’ve selected for our Mother’s Day designs hold symbolic meaning and add depth to why we select the blooms we do! Let’s explore the traditional symbolic meanings of our Mother’s Day flowers:
Peonies: are considered to be good luck, and symbolize love and honor.
Mums - represent long life, friendship, and happiness; plus, we love that they double as a pun when referring to your “mum.”
Carnations - are one of the flowers (like roses) where the color affects the meaning, but overall, they represent love and devotion.
Stock - a symbol of happy life and existence.
Alstroemeria - friendship and devotion.
Ranunculus - charm and attraction.
Roses - love and royalty.
Snapdragons - symbolize longevity and overall goodluck.
Wax - are associated with riches and enduring wealth.
It’s an honor to flower for the mama-figures in your life on Mother’s Day. One of our favorite things about the holiday is the droves of young kids coming into our shops bright and early to snag flowers for a mama who is, hopefully, at home sleeping in. Months of planning and prepping come to fruition when we see the smile of those kids gingerly taking the flowers they’ll give to their mom - most of the arrangements the size of them.
There’s more to explore on our Mother’s Day Menu! As you peruse and select the perfect blooms for the mamas in your life, know that every flower was selected with intention so that you can Share Love Through the Power of Flowers! Thank you for choosing us, Wild Flowers, and Happy Mother’s Day!
-Meg