Eid al-Fitr in Okurcalar: white and pink bouquets and how to send them
Eid al-Fitr in Okurcalar flowers come almost entirely in white, from 15 White Roses with Coffee Wrapping to a Bunch of 101 White Roses. White lilies and hydrangeas with peony roses fill out the rest of the section. Pink is the only other colour on offer, and red shows up once, paired with white rather than standing alone, so the colour is already settled and what is left to pick is the flower, the size and the address.
What goes into an Eid bouquet: white roses, lilies and pink
A rose does most of the work in an Eid bouquet, since it is the flower sold in the largest numbers and it gives a bouquet its weight and its centre. Eucalyptus fills the gaps between the heads, as in the 31 White Roses with Eucalyptus.
Where a full, layered rose sits next to hydrangea, as in the Bouquet of White Hydrangeas and Peony Roses, that rose is usually one of the English varieties bred by David Austin. The name describes the shape of the flower, not an actual peony.
Victorian flower dictionaries read a white rose as a sign of purity and a pink one as a gentler kind of affection. No single dictionary ever agreed with the next, though, so the colours here are a preference rather than a rule. Pink suits anyone who wants some warmth without reaching for red, and the section also carries a line of cream roses for a softer version of white.
The same white rose is sold at very different scales here. Fifteen stems come wrapped in coffee-coloured paper, twenty-five are Dutch roses from greenhouse-grown classic varieties, fifty-one make a fuller bouquet, and a hundred and one arrive as a bunch rather than a wrapped bouquet.
A Bunch and a Cylinder of White Roses hold the same flower in two different shapes, and the choice between them comes down to which photo in the listing suits the address. Anyone after something plainer, outside the Eid colours, can look through flowers for every day instead.
Lilies and hydrangeas carry much larger heads than a rose, so a bouquet of seven white lilies already reads as full rather than sparse. Every bouquet here is put together after the order is placed, and a photo goes to the sender before the courier leaves, so a stem or a ribbon can still be changed on request; timing and zones are on the delivery page.
Lilies and hydrangeas at home: pollen, cats and water
Every part of a lily is toxic to cats, and so is its pollen and the water left standing in the vase. A home with a cat is better served by roses than by the lily bouquets in this section.
Lily pollen also stains fabric badly and is hard to lift once it sets. The anthers are usually removed as soon as the flower opens, and any pollen already on cloth comes off with sticky tape rather than a rub, which only grinds it in.
Hydrangea drinks more water than the other flowers here, and a head that has gone limp is revived by holding the whole thing under cool water for an hour or two. Day to day, the routine is the same as for any cut flower: a fresh angled cut, water changed every day or two, kept away from fruit. A rose looked after this way lasts about a week.
Eid al-Fitr in Okurcalar runs on the lunar calendar, and the date can shift by a day or two from an early forecast. A bouquet ordered for a set date and time can be booked into any zone, and the earlier the order goes in, the more time slots are still open. Right up until the bouquet leaves, and at latest six hours before delivery, the date, the time and the address can still be changed.
One order can carry bouquets to several addresses at once, with delivery worked out separately for each one; a card message is free, and sweets or balloons can be added at checkout.
For a sender abroad, prices show in the local currency, and the currency switcher is there for reference only, since the card-issuing bank converts the total at its own rate. Payment goes through by Visa or Mastercard, and where the address isn't known, the recipient's phone number is enough to place the order. How soon a particular bouquet can arrive is shown on its own card in the catalogue, since that varies by item and by zone.
White is the easiest place to start when the guest list or the address isn't settled yet, and the roses run from fifteen stems to a full bunch of a hundred and one. Anyone sending flowers for a different date can look through other occasions instead, and the delivery page sets out the zones and the timing for wherever the bouquet is headed.