Choosing Your Wedding Bouquet: Meaningful Flower Options

The idea of flowers having some kind of meaning attached to flowers comes out of the victorian era. While this idea is romantic, not everyone would want the victorian era to be their reference point when figuring out which flowers they in their bouquet or table decor. After all, it was under the victorian era that we see the global colonial project that would galvanize parts of the United States, Africa and Asia. If you are looking for floral symbolism that is in no way connected to the victorian era, The following are three books from Zimbabwe, South Africa and Botswana that all build meaning around specific flowers.

Sunflowers: Theory of Flight by Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu

This story could have just been a sad tale about the fate of a poor girl, orphaned at an early age. But what Ndovu does is use magical realism, the color yellow, and sunflowers to tell the transcendent story of Genie. But what Ndovu does is use magical realism, the color yellow, and sunflowers to tell the transcendent story of Genie.Readers witness this gentle, bright, beautiful woman find love and her place in the sun. Her life begins and ends in the sunflower field near her home. In this book, sunflowers reconcile the relationship between resilience and joy—two qualities often discussed as mutually exclusive. But through Genie, readers are reintroduced to a well-known flower with new meaning. This bloom is perfect for your bouquet if you’re a joyful woman who has passed through difficult places and come out the other side with your ability to feel joy still intact.

Zinnias: Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda

This book rightly points out that money does not make a relationship. After Toloki and Noria reconnect, he brings her freshly picked zinnias. Flora and fauna continue to shape their affection when Toloki decorates their makeshift tin home with pictures of gardens, and the two imagine themselves walking through lush landscapes. With mutual respect, imagination, and freshly picked zinnias, they make the most of their dire economic situation in post-apartheid South Africa. These flowers are for the woman who values sentimentality—someone who may have come from a financially difficult background but found her way to stability through love.

Daises: Maru by Bessie Head

This novella is a dramatic story of a love triangle with echoes of Jane Eyre. Margret, a woman from the marginalized Masarwa ethnic group in Botswana, causes a stir when she arrives in a conservative town to work as a teacher.What unfolds is a Victorian-style drama written in poetic prose, complete with a magnetic love interest and a heroine whose quiet strength reshapes the world around her. Daisies are for the bride whose love story is novel-worthy—for the woman who may seem reserved, but harbors a powerful sense of self and won’t settle for anything less than a love that changes everything.

Happy Reading, and Happy flower selecting!