Wedding Flower Guide: Popular Flowers for Your Bouquets

For those of us who aren’t florists or flower experts, picking a floral arrangement may seem like a foreign task. This guide offers popular wedding flowers, accounting for the seasons in which they bloom, colors, and what each flower symbolizes, so that you can pick the perfect flowers to accent your special day.

Find your favorite flower to decorate your wedding day!

Choosing wedding flowers can be difficult, but a great place to start is checking out the most popular wedding flowers to use in your bridal bouquet and other wedding floral arrangements.

Consider these common types of flowers for your big day!

Rose

Garden roses are an obvious choice for wedding flowers, but a classic for a reason. There are many different breeds of roses, and they are available year-round, perfect for brides in any season.

Roses are traditionally red, pink, or yellow, but they come in an abundance of colors depending on florist and seasonal availability.

The rose is traditionally associated with love and romance, although different colors symbolize different values.

Peony

Peonies are a popular wedding flower, perfect for late spring or early summer weddings. Their delicate, fragrant petals usually come in shades of pink, red, or white.

The peony is perfect for wedding floral arrangements, whether it’s the bride holding a beautiful bouquet with peonies as the focus, or in centerpieces or other wedding decor. The full-bodied flower just needs a few fillers around it for a gorgeous look!

Peonies symbolize beauty, romance, and prosperity, and are seen as omens of good fortune and happy marriage.

Hydrangea

Hydrangeas can be used as the focus of your floral arrangement or as accent flowers. Theses flowers generally bloom in spring and summer, but faded blooms are available well into winter as well.

Hydrangeas range in color from pink to white to blue, sometimes with purple or lavender pink-blue hybrids, making them amenable to any color palette. You can fit these popular wedding flowers in to a wide range of color schemes, making them an easy choice for your wedding bouquet. 

Hydrangeas can symbolize gratitude and heartfelt emotion.

Gardenia

The gardenia is a classic wedding flower, timeless and beautiful. You can’t go wrong with a wedding bouquet made up of gardenias, some greenery, and silk ribbon wrapped for a gorgeous, classic look.

Gardenias are white, and are typically in season early spring and summer and again in late summer and early fall. You can use these popular wedding flowers for a timeless, all white bridal bouquet, or they work well with other flowers. Mix gardenias with a pop of color in your floral arrangements and displays.

These flowers have many symbolic meanings, including purity, love (often secret love), trust, and clarity.

Daisy

Daisies are in season year-round, so they are a popular choice for weddings through warm and cold months. Whether you want a rustic bouquet for a fall wedding or bright and happy summer floral arrangements, daisies work well.

There are many different species of daisies, so they come in almost any color you could want and fit into all sorts of floral arrangements and color schemes. White daisies are popular, but you can also find them in all sorts of shades to fit your color palette. This makes them an easy addition to any centerpiece or floral display. 

The daisy symbolizes innocence, purity, and simplicity.

Carnation

Carnations are a popular, simple choice for floral arrangements, and can be accent flowers or the bulk of the bouquet. The carnation is a relatively affordable flower, so it’s a great choice on a budget, or it acts as an inexpensive filler around your focal blooms. 

They are in season all year, and are often used in winter weddings because of their bloom and versatility. Carnations are typically pink or purple in shade, but range from white to orange, yellow, and dark red.

The symbolism of carnations differs based on color, but often the flowers represent love, gratitude, or admiration.

Baby’s Breath

Baby’s Breath are often used as filler flowers in a bouquet, but these tiny white flowers are wildly popular and can be the focus of your arrangement as well. This popular wedding flower is also affordable, so you can cut costs with this option.

Consider adding baby’s breath to your wedding floral arrangements, either as an accent for pops of white and a different texture, or to flesh out bouquets for a fuller look.

Baby’s Breath is available year round, and the tiny petals are white. This versatile flower is very commonly used as a filler, but they also make a unique and lovely bouquet themselves. Our example above shows a cloud of baby’s breath wrapped in silk ribbon!

This flower symbolizes long-lasting love, pureness, and innocence.

Sweet Pea

The sweet pea is a popular bridal flower, often used in combination with other flowers or as a centerpiece. You could create a colorful bouquet of all sweet peas, or use them for a pop of color in a mixed bouquet.

These aromatic flowers have one of the widest color ranges, making them easily included in many arrangements. Sweet peas are generally used in springtime weddings, available from spring to mid-summer, depending on your location. 

They symbolize delicate or blissful pleasure.

Orchid

The orchid is an exotic and refined flower, and is available year-round depending on what breed you are looking for. Their unique bloom makes the orchid a lovely focal point in any wedding flower display. 

Orchids are generally purple, ranging from a gray purple to red purple hue, but other colors exist as well. White orchids are popular for weddings, although they can be expensive. This delicate flower looks stunning in bouquets and table arrangements, and you can even accent it as a single stem to save on costs and create a unique look. 

The orchid represents love, beauty, elegance, and strength.

Calla Lily

Calla lilies are incredibly elegant flowers, perfect for any wedding day. The calla lily is known for its distinctive petal shape, like a long trumpet.

Calla lilies are typically white, but you can also find them in shades of yellow, orange, and pinks to dark purple. The dark purple calla lilies create an edgy or modern look in contrast with your white wedding gown! These popular wedding flowers bloom in early spring through early summer, but they can be grown year-round indoors with proper care.

The calla lily symbolizes purity, faith, and magnificent beauty.

Dahlia

The dahlia has become a very popular wedding flower in modern settings, as the larger blooms are typically not too pricey and create a splash in your floral arrangements.

Dahlias are easy to incorporate into your bouquets and centerpieces, as they come in a wide range of colors. You can find dahlias in shades of pink, peach, orange, white, yellow, lavender, and more. They bloom in mid-summer through the fall, making them popular for colder season weddings.

The dahlia is known to symbolize elegance, strength, creativity, and dignity. Fun fact: in the Victorian era, dahlias were believed to stand for lifelong commitment, making them the perfect wedding flower.