Valentine's Day - Is It All About Flowers?

A great deal of people think that Valentine's Day was created by Hallmark as a means of making money, but did you know that Valentine’s Day has a story that is shrouded in mystery. This intriguing article from florist Elitonia tells us what it's all about...

We all know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance but did you know that the day of romance we call Valentine’s Day is named for a Christian martyr and dates back to the 5th century. We know that the ancient Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia, a spring festival, on the 15th of February and with the introduction of Christianity, the holiday moved to the 14th of February, the saint day that celebrated several early Christian martyrs named Valentine. It is thought that as a part of the celebrations, boys drew names of girls from a box. There are many other thoughts about the origins of Valentine’s day, hence the mystery.

In modern times, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in as many ways as there are people! As a florist, we see so much creativity by our customers that we thought we would share some of the stories with you.

• One of our customers this year has ordered a bouquet of two dozen roses to send to his wife to say, ‘I Love You’ and brought in a small sentimental gift that he also bought for her and asked that we include this when we do the delivery. He personally wrote out a card that we were happy to deliver with the flowers. He told us to take tissues when we do the delivery because this is the first time in their 40+ years of marriage that he has ever given her flowers, let alone a gift, and that she was guaranteed to break into tears (which means we will cry too!). He went on to explain that as the years had gone by, he didn’t tell his wife ‘I Love You’ as much as he should so that was what the flowers were for and that he didn’t thank her enough for all she did every day and that was what the gift was for. This was such a lovely story that we were in tears by the end of it!
• We have had another customer come in and order seven Red Rose bouquets to be sent to seven different women. The card was to be the same on each one of them with only the name of the recipient changed. Whilst we never question the motives of our customers, he went on to voluntarily explain that he had recently been on a speed dating evening and met seven ladies who he was interested in and that hopefully by sending the flowers, at least one of them would be thankful enough to go out with him! You got to admire his tenacity and he has promised to let us know the outcome!
• We had another customer come in and ask for a single Red Rose that he was using to place on his late wife’s grave – he said he did it every year as he wanted her to know that he stilled loved her!

So, whilst these stories are about our gentlemen customers, we have many ladies buying floral gifts for their men, after all it is all about equality! So, what did they buy?

• One of our regular female customers came in and ordered a beautiful rose plant that comes in a gorgeous ceramic pot and said her husband will absolutely love it because he could plant it in the garden and she wanted him to nurture it and that as the plant grew so would their love. How beautiful is that.
• Another of our female customers has ordered a large bouquet of tulips to be sent to her father as this is his favourite flower and he is quite poorly and needed cheering up and she said he wouldn’t expect that it would come on Valentine’s Day so would be even more of a surprise.

It is one of our busiest times in the calendar, but we thought we would also give you some other ideas that you could use to say, “I Love You’. How about trying some of these:

• Cook your loved one a meal or go out for a lovely meal at their favourite restaurant or pub
• Give your loved one a lovely card and their favourite chocolate
• Go ice-skating
• Go for a walk in the park
• Go on a mini holiday break
• Let your other half control the remote and watch something together

As florists, we love the sentiment behind Valentine’s Day and the saying ‘I love you’ in flowers, but when the day is over, you will see us with blisters on our feet, thorns and cuts on our hands and arms, aching muscles and a very large G&T! But above all, we will have huge smiles on our faces because we will have been given the privilege of delivering all that love to so many of you and that is something that money can’t buy.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!