Once upon a time, you couldn’t move for carnations.
They were at every wedding, presented to every dinner host, given to every teacher at the end of term.
But they’re deeply unfashionable these days.
Florists are inundated with requests for wedding bouquets made from roses and peonies but as soon as designers suggest brides have carnations, they apparently turn up their noses.
‘Most designer florists, they love carnations now, and you get chastised for it,’ Christina Stembel, founder of Farmgirl Flowers, tells PopSugar.
‘But there are new varieties of carnations that people don’t even know are carnations, so we’ve even kind of pulled the wool over some of their eyes.’
So entrenched and inane is the snobbery towards carnations, that when florists suggest brides choose dianthus (the botanical name for carnations), brides will say they like them and then change their mind when they’re told that they’re actually carnations.
‘We’ll be like, “It’s dianthus; do you like it?” And they’ll be like, “Yes, it’s beautiful”. Then we’ll be like, “It’s actually a carnation”. And they’re like, “No. I hate carnations”.
Don’t believe me?
Our own esteemed Rebecca Reid, 26, got married earlier this year and she claims that ‘carnations are trash’.
‘They look cheap and ugly and I never considered using them for my wedding arrangements,’ she says. No, she had a load of eucalyptus leaves and white roses in her bouquet. So millennial.
And yet, if you’re looking for flowers which actually last and don’t shed their petals before you’ve even finished exchanging vowels, then you really can’t do better than a bunch of carnations.
And you know, carnations are actually really easy to cross-pollinate so you can get mega variations with all sorts of cool colours and patterns.
You probably don’t care about that but you know, if you really wanted a unique bouquet for your wedding, just grab a few nice shades and a paint brush and away you go.
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