Princess Eugenie Royal Wedding Flowers Guide to Bridal Bouquet and Floral Decor
When Sarah Ferguson walked down the aisle in July 1986 at her wedding to Prince Andrew, she not only carried a dramatic S-shaped bouquet, but hid her tiara under an elaborate flower crown too.
So expectations are high for the wedding flowers of the couple's younger daughter, Princess Eugenie, who will marry Jack Brooksbank on October 12. The royal bride-to-be is believed to have hired Dutch-born London-based Rob Van Helden. The florist has long been a celebrity favorite, with past clients including Elton John, Pierce Brosnan and Autumn Phillips, the wife of the Queen’s eldest grandson, Peter Phillips.
Van Helden has a preference for natural-looking arrangements, so we can expect a bouquet that is hand-tied rather than stems that are wired and taped together. “I like designs to look natural and not contrived,” he says. “I love to work with a mass of one type of flower, as this is the way in which flowers tend to grow in the wild, and I particularly like to try to incorporate fruit, vegetables and herbs in to my work.”
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Given that Eugenie and Jack want their wedding to be plastic-free, it’s also likely that the bride will choose seasonal British flowers instead of blooms grown abroad. Late summer stocks and scabious will both be in season, while foliage might include dogwood and skimmia. The seasonality of Eugenie’s bouquet will differentiate it from those carried by the Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Sussex, whose weddings both took place in the spring.
Given that this is a royal wedding, the bridal bouquet will be laden with significance. The use of myrtle is a tradition for royal brides dating back to Queen Victoria. Both Kate and Meghan’s bouquets included sprigs from a plant grown from the myrtle used in the Queen’s wedding bouquet in 1947, as did Eugenie’s mother.
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Both Kate and Meghan carried a mixture of symbolic stems. At her wedding to Prince Harry in May, Meghan carried a small arrangement by florist Philippa Craddock containing scented sweet peas, lily of the valley, forget-me-nots, astilbe, jasmine, astrantia, myrtle and several flowers hand-picked by Harry from the couple's private garden at Kensington Palace.
In turn Kate, who married Prince William in April 2011, carried a bouquet by florist Shane Connolly that was almost entirely lily of the valley, as well as myrtle, sweet William, hyacinth and ivy.
Tamara Abraham is a UK-based journalist and the former Managing Editor at Business of Fashion. She spent six years in New York where she launched and ran the fashion and lifestyle team at Dailymail.com. Now back in her native London, she writes on fashion, lifestyle and royals for publications including Grazia, the i Paper, and of course, BAZAAR.com.
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