The Flower Girl

     Young, innocent, whimsical, those are all words people have come to associate with flower girls. It is because of this that they symbolize so much at weddings. It is also because of this that they have been around for so long, for they have been incorporated into just as many weddings nowadays as ever. When you think about it though, you come to wonder how the tradition started in the first place.

     In medieval times, it was customary for royal weddings to have large amounts of particularly young guests. It became tradition of sorts for these young guests to bring herbs and flowers of all kinds with them to scatter before the wedding reception as a way of adding a bit of sweet and subtle beauty to the marriage ceremony. The flower girl we see nowadays mainly evolved from such traditions seen at Victorian weddings, back in the mid seventeenth to early eighteenth centuries. Then, a young girl was chosen to walk down the aisle right before the vows and exchanging of the rings wearing a white dress with a colored sash, carrying a decorative basket filled with flower petals. This same tradition is seen quite commonly all over the world now, as many people cannot help but wish to incorporate such a sweet and innocent image into their wedding celebrations.

By Julia Dankov