As a florist, I’d love to have access to all the flowers all the time, but their ephemeral nature makes me appreciate what each season has to offer.  For my clients, working with the seasons when selecting their wedding flowers ensures they’ll receive the best quality flowers available for their wedding. Each season has blooms that are especially plentiful and that also means they’re at their best pricing during that season.  In this series, I’ll share my favorite blooms for each season in four posts, one for each season.

Midwestern winters don’t offer much in the way of locally grown flowers, so here in Chicago we rely on warmer climates to source flowers for winter weddings. 

My favorite winter wedding flower is the hellebore. A bit more obscure than the rest of my favorites, hellebores are a winter bloom that has been under the radar in the US for quite some time, though they are quite popular in Europe.  Some call them Christmas roses or lenten roses, however they are in the buttercup family. Hellebores are typically available as a cut flower from early winter into late spring. They come in white, green, white with pink speckles, pink, mauve, and burgundy and they’re some of the first flowers to pop up in the yard in early spring.

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Photo credits: left, Sierra Flower Finder, right: Justine Bursoni Photography

Another favorite bloom specific to winter is acacia, sometimes also called mimosa. Its delicate texture and tiny yellow poof ball blooms are truly charming. And its sweet scent is divine! It is super seasonal, available only in winter and early spring, and grown as a cut flower in California and Italy.

Honorable mention goes to tulips (especially the double and parrot forms), muscari hyacinth, and poppies. My two very favorite flowers available in winter are anemone and ranunculus, but since they are available in spring from local growers, I’ll talk about them in my post on spring wedding flowers!

Looking for more winter wedding inspiration? You can view examples of our past work for winter weddings here.

Do you have a favorite winter flower? If so, share it in the comments!