Flowers Used In Celtic Wedding Ceremonies

Weddings are generally ways of transmitting in a traditional note the heritage of a nation, either through customs or various objects left as family heirlooms throughout the years. Why are weddings considered events that more or less follow the patterns of tradition, what makes them suitable to work on elements that are known to be existing for ages inside a nation’s heritage?  It is because people in their need to find different ways of living, ways that might bring them a better existence, migrate to places which seem to them more satisfying to their purposes.

Once they migrate they see themselves integrating in another civilization to which they, willingly or not, surrender delivering themselves into the hands of another society. But somehow they need to have their own roots, their own identity in all this mirage of a better life, the blood from within is claiming its rights, whether they are aware of it or not. Thus whenever they have the opportunity to present their own roots, they do it, no matter what!  In fact, in all this presentation there is a certain pride in everything they display be it inside a wedding celebration, baptize or funeral.

This is why weddings are loaded with elements that brings the families involved back to their origins; it is a way to prove to themselves that they still have their own national identity and as such their individual roots. The displaying of a wedding celebration in the colorful customs of the couple’s nationality is performed with wedding elements that include not only the material details, but also the spiritual ones. The material details are most of the times the ones to contain symbols and significance in their appearance, as it is for instance the flowers used in Celtic wedding ceremonies.



I have been invited once to attend to an Irish wedding and inside its unfolding I was surprised to see the shower of some plants which I knew from my grandma that are poisonous in their essence. The ivy plant, which most of the time is used as a living fence in decorating the enclosed spaces of gardens, or some housewives even grow it as plant to climb on the exterior walls of the house in order to keep shadow for the hot summer days. There were some interesting decorations made with this plant, especially at the tables were all the bride and groom’s friends were sitting.



After the wedding event has reached to an end when there were only few of us left to help with the things around, I asked my friend how come that she had used the ivy plant in the decoration of our table. Her answer was that these plants were the flowers used in Celtic wedding ceremonies as symbol of vibrancy, connection and strong friendships because it has a leaning towards interweaving in growth and in its growing it presents twists and turns that exist in every friendship, but at the same time lasting for long time. The best thing you could do would be to assort your invitations with the theme, and this would mean to have celtic wedding invitations.

I told her that I wasn’t familiar to this plant’s meaning, for after that to have noticed that her head adornment had in its design some leaves of this plants; seeing my puzzled look at the discovery of her head adornment, she smiled back at me saying that this plant once worn on the head represented also the clarity of thought and the celebration of the living nature around us. She was the one to tell me that other flowers used in Celtic weddings were reed, the yellow flowers of gorse also known as furze, heather, and apple tree blossoms.