The Bridal Bouquets of Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale - in cinemas Friday 12th September 2025

I didn’t join the Downton fandom until fairly recently when I binged the whole thing on Netflix. I aspire to be Lady Violet Crawley when I grow up. Like any good Sunday night drama, there’s a healthy number of weddings involved - and all those weddings need wedding flowers. Here’s a whistle-stop guide to the bridal bouquets of Downton Abbey. See the gallery at the end for images of each!

*** This blog contains spoilers for all series of Downton Abbey, and the subsequent movies. ***

1. Daisy and William Mason
   I’ts hard to identify all the flowers in the beautiful wildflower bouquet Daisy carried during her deathbed wedding to William Mason, but it looks like a gorgeous collection of wildflowers and definitely includes blue nigella flowers or ‘Love in a Mist’. This flower symbolises enduring love and unity, making it perfect for wedding celebrations.
   

2. Lady Mary Crawley’s marriage to Matthew Crawley
   This was a long, elegant sheaf of large white calla lillies with frilly asparagus fern. It’s simple, timeless and classy, just like Lady Mary.
   White calla lillies symbolise faithfulness and new life, as well as grace. This makes them perfect for more formal bridal bouquets.
   

3. Lady Edith’s doomed “wedding” to Sir Anthony Strallen
   Again, it’s always hard to identify all the flowers in a bouquet from a photo but my analysis of the content of this cute little bridal posy is: large pink roses, white spray roses, white ranunculus, cream hypericum berries and some white flowers that looks a little like heather. Foliage that I can see is something with smooth leaves like asclepias fern and rosemary.
   
   This is a very traditoinal little bridal posy - it’s dainty and delicate and pretty. Pink roses symbolise admiration, grace and joy (sadly this wedding didn’t turn out so joyful for Lady Edith). White ranunculus mean new beginnings, making it a popular wedding flower.
   
   
   4. Anna Smith and John Bates
   Anna Smith, Lady Mary’s loyal ladies maid, also carries a whimsical wildflower bouquet to her modest wedding to John Bates. These small posies of readily-available garden-style flowers would have been highly typical as wedding flowers for working-class women in the 1910’s and 1920’s. They would not have had the means to buy elaborate bridal flowers and would have made these bouquets themselves from what they had available from their own gardens or donated by neighbors.
   
   

4. Lady Rose and Atticus Aldridge
   Rose is a lady after my own heart with this all white and dark greens with lovely textured foliage. The ferns create a lovely cascading shape. Rose’s bouquet is very typical of the time and is super classy. White roses have also been a staple of wedding florals, for their beauty, but also because of their symbolism or purity, innocence and new beginnings.
   

5. Mrs Hughes and Mr Carson
   This bouquet contains the perfect recipe symbolically for a bridal bouquet, with some lovely nods to Mrs Hughes’ Scottish heritage such as the use of thistle (eryngium) and white heather, which is a very traditional Scottish symbol of good luck.
   Broom - for purity and simplicity, new beginnings
   White Eryngium - strength, resiliance, protection
   White Freesia - trust
   Nude roses - heartfelt love and gratitude
   Pink wax flower - success and patience
   White Heather - Good luck and protection
   Japanese Andromeda - Pieris japonica - renewal
   

6. Lady Mary Crawley and Henry Talbot
   This bouquet looks suspiciously (to me) like the bouquet Lady Rose carries a couple of seasons before , including the beautiful foliage and white roses.
   
   

7. Lady Edith Crawley and Bertie Pelham, Marquess of Hexham
   In contrast to her dainty pink posy from her ill-fated non-wedding to Anthony Strallan, this wild confection of deep red roses and whites, with an abundant froth of greenery is wonderfully symbolic of the grand things to come for Edith and Bertie.
   Red roses are the most recognisable floral symbols of romantic love. This bouquet also appears to be wound through with white stephanotis, a beautiful large-flowered jasmine-type flower - whose main meaning is ‘marital happiness’.
   
   8. Lucy Smith and Tom Branson (A New Era)
   Maybe I’m biased because the bouquet Lucy Smith carries in the second Downton movie ‘A New Era’ quite closely resembles what I made for my own bridal bouquet , but this one might be my favourite. It’s full of textures brought by the various ferns and tendrils of jasmine, pure white carnations, white roses large and spray, and gypsophila. White carnations are symbolic of new beginnings, with their best friend gypsophila symbolising connection and everlasting love.

   
   I’m recreating some of these bridal bouquets so check out my Instagram to judge my efforts!