Same-Sex Flower Tips?

Now that we are celebrating same-sex marriage in New York, here are a few bits of folklore surrounding a some flowers that may or may not pertain to gay marriage! Very interesting...

#1: Violets
- Flower symbolized and used to celebrate same-sex love (though primarily exchanged between lesbians in the 1920s-1940s) Origins of the violet can be traced back to Sappho and her poem about wearing garlands of violets with her lovers.

- In the 16th century, men and women planning to marry would wear violets

#2: Ladslove
- 19th and 20th century English poets used ladslove to symbolize homosexuality and exchange of same-sex love in their works

#3: Calamus
- Egyptians believed the plant was a powerful aphrodisiac

- Walt Whitman used this plant as the centerpiece to his forty-five poems dedicated to homoerotic love

#4: Poppies
- The flower was exchanged between soldiers as a sign of love and romance prior to WWI

- Flower later became known as the flower of the eternal sleep (and used often for those who have died during times of war as a soldier)

- The Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz is the only other character who falls asleep in the Poppy Field with Dorothy (representing possibly both the Queer and the ‘eternal sleep’)

(Source)

And remember - we are offering 10% off to the first 10 couples who use our services for their LGBT wedding! There are a few spots left!

Spotted!

Lady Gaga was spotted in NYC last night carrying sunflowers. Very interesting... here are some fun sunflower facts! In addition to being good at absorbing radiation and brightening up a person's day or home:

• The sunflower is the state flower of the US state of Kansas, and one of the city flowers of Kitakyūshū, Japan.
• The sunflower is often used as a symbol of green ideology, much as the red rose is a symbol of socialism or social democracy. The sunflower is also the symbol of the Vegan Society.
• During the late 19th century, the flower was used as the symbol of the Aesthetic Movement.
• Subject of Van Gogh's most famous still life, Sunflowers
• The sunflower is the national flower of Peru, Russia, and Ukraine.
• The sunflower was chosen as the symbol of the Spiritualist Church for many reasons, but mostly because it turns toward the sun as "Spiritualism turns toward the light of truth". Modern Spiritualists always have art or jewelry with sunflower designs.

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Press Release

Last week, the mayor's office tweeted that there had to be a lottery to choose who got to be married first on Sunday: "To serve people fairly, we're holding a lottery for the chance to get married on Sunday, 1st day of marriage equality." Over 650 couples were married! While some may not have been in the first round, we suspect that many will be following suit.

We at Alaric Flower Design are thrilled for our gay and lesbian friends in New York. So thrilled, that we are offering a 10% discount for the first 10 couples to use our services for their wedding. While we have been doing gay weddings for quite some time, we are anticipating a boom come Sunday and couldn't be more excited.

Located in Midtown Manhattan, Alaric Flower Design is a full-service flower design studio that caters to a plethora of businesses and people. The convenient studio location provides added inspiration for creating unique floral designs and a pleasant space for one-on-one consultations for weddings, corporate, or social event planning. Alaric's combination of knowledge, creativity, professionalism, and a deep passion for flowers and floral arrangements makes for a growing list of prestigious and satisfied clientele.

For more information, call Alaric Flower Design at 212.308.3974 or visit www.alaricflowers.com.

Shark Week!

Who is into Shark Week? Anyone? We don't quite get the hype or why it's "a thing" but we do love that The Discovery Channel used Lady Gaga's "Show Me Your Teeth" in the commercial. Hilarious and right on point!

In honor of shark week, if you order anything predominantly red this week, you'll get a free upgrade!

SYTYCD Update!

Now, we usually blog about flowers and things pertaining to florists here, but it's time to spread our wings, or in this case: stretch our legs. This season of So You Think You Can dance is incredible and below is our favorite dance of the season so far. It features Sasha and Melanie (by far, the most talented girls) dancing a routine choreographed by Sonya Tayeh. It's about strength, and these two pull it off better than anyone!

The dubstep song choice made it even stronger. We were pleased, and America was too... as they voted them to the top.

Uses of Roses

"A rose by any other name wouldn't be as sweet."

How about a rose by any other use? Besides being beautiful and smelling sweet, roses actually have quite a few other uses!

1. Skin care. This blog has the recipe for rose water, which is the base for toner and a delicious sounding mud mask!

2. Cooking. You can add some types of rose petals to foods to increase flavor or as a garnish for desserts. The damascena and apothecary roses are most used for culinary endeavors. You can also make jam (or buy it...) our of rose hips.

3. Secret meetings. Yes, secret meetings! In ancient Greece, they decorated the ceiling of a room to indicate a secret meeting was taking place. Not sure how secret that was since everyone knew, but ok!

4. Medicine. Roses actually contain many essential vitamins! They have Vitamin C, pectic, malic and citric acids. Rose hip or rose petal tea removes toxins from the body, can cure colds, is a great remedy for stomach problems, and even irregular periods or infertility, according to this website.

There you have it. The many uses of the wonderful rose. Anybody have any other interesting uses or remedies? Share them in the comments!

Rainbow Roses for June

The month of June is very busy when it comes to events in NYC. Not only is the month's birth flower the rose, which is very popular among our clients, it's Pride month!

What better a way to celebrate June than to combine the two?

Don't know what we're talking about? Well how about a visual:




That's right! Rainbow roses! "HOW DO THEY DO IT?" you may be wondering... well, it's complicated and takes time to perfect, but is very doable. You start with a white rose. You clip the end of the stem into several sections. And you dip the ends into different dyes! The dye makes its way up through the stem into the petals and viola! We have the rainbow rose.

For more information, check out the Wikipedia!

Smell Flowers, Not Smoke!

This has been an ongoing battle in NYC and the government finally sided with the flowers, so to speak.

As of May 23rd, smoking is now banned in all public parks. With the heath risks and prices of cigarettes so high, we're surprised smokers still exist in New York anyway! Below is a picture of the sign that has gone up. The use of flowers is a clever marketing tactic used to incite a sentimentality that may not necessarily be related to the issue at hand, but works! What are your thoughts on the matter?

#freedeliveryfriday

We are doing something new around here. To celebrate the coming of the Spring and to help alleviate some of the aggravation our NYC clients have from April and May rain, we are announcing: FREE DELIVERY FRIDAY!

Every third Friday of the month, we will waive delivery charges for orders of $75 or more. So mosey on over to our website where you can browse through our established classics or call in a custom order: 212.308.3794.

Happy Friday! Spread the word on Twitter with our #freedeliveryfriday hash-tag!

Pretty Peonies

Lately, we've been getting a lot of requests for peonies. Of course, we can see why -- they're beautiful Spring flowers. As one of our Twitter friends put it, they are "feminine and gorgeous, classic yet contemporary!" We couldn't have put it better ourselves.

There is a lot of myth and folklore surrounding the peony, too! Records that date back thousands of years give us a few different stories. One legend has it that the peony is named after Paeon, a physician to the gods, who received the flower on Mount Olympus from the mother of Apollo. And another tells the story of that same physician who was “saved” from the fate of dying as other mortals by being turned into the flower we know today as the peony.

Whether your believe one story or the other, you can believe this: these gorgeous flowers are versatile and look lovely both pre-bloom and in bloom:

Wedding Pompadours!

So, who saw Grey's Anatomy last night? It was a great episode! We're so excited for Callie and Arizona (minus Callie's horrible mother.)

But we were most excited about... of course... the flowers! Oh, they were so perfect and elegant! Our favorite part? The pompadours! Last night, we speculated on Twitter that they were made of hydrangea, but on closer inspection they are garden roses!

Unfortunately, that's the only shot that's up online right now, but hopefully they will release a full "wedding album!"

Speaking of May Flowers...

Today on Style.com, there is a poll asking readers to cast a vote for the best floral fashion moment. One big problem! We aren't in the poll! Sure, we're just a little flower shop, but we've done big things. In February, as some of you may know, we participated in NY Couture Fashion Week. We presented three gorgeous dresses made all out of flowers:

And as biased as we may be, ours were way better looking and natural than the tacky 80's floral patterns that the industry is trying to bring back. Plus, our dresses are the most couture of them all; after a day or two, they die. Could real flowers ever be the next fashion trend? We like to think so. Flowers, after all, are as ephemeral as fashion itself.

April Showers...

April showers bring May flowers. But in some places, the flowers are suffering from too much rain. With the changing of the weather, as it becomes more extreme because of (the world ending in 2012, global warming, childhood obesity, whatever), we are seeing more Spring rain than ever. In Portland, it rained 29 out of the 30 days in March -- delaying the annual tulip festival.

Just yesterday, a record tornado pulverized Tuscaloosa, Birmingham, and other surrounding towns in Alabama. Rain and destruction is abundant around the areas.

And here in New York? It's rained more than we'd like to think about this month. (It's more difficult than you think to get around in the rain in a walking-city!) In fact, the sky just opened up and began to pour. Again.

So what do we have to look forward to here? Being able to run through a field of tulips isn't exactly the outcome, but we are trying to keep things bright at the flower shop.

And since May is around the corner... MAYbe the rain will cease and give us some flowers. Some sunshine would be nice, too.