Occasions in Paris

Occasions in Paris, from muguet in May to chrysanthemums at Toussaint

On 1 November, Toussaint, the French take chrysanthemums to family graves: in 2024 four million households bought flowers or plants for the day, and 64% of those purchases were chrysanthemums. Occasions in Paris follow a French calendar that doesn't always line up with the one a sender abroad has in mind, so choosing the right bouquet starts with working out whose date it actually is.

Fête des mères in Paris, and Mother's Day a few weeks earlier next door

A law passed in 1950 fixed France's Fête des mères on the last Sunday of May, moving only to the first Sunday of June in years when that Sunday happens to fall on Pentecost. Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec keep Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May instead, so someone ordering from Brussels or Geneva is often working to a date that falls weeks before the one the mother in Paris is expecting. Grandmothers get a separate Sunday, the first one in March, a quieter occasion than the mother's own day.

Fête des mères is among the busiest dates of the year for flower orders in Paris. Order volumes run well above an ordinary weekend, delivery windows widen, and no florist promises an exact minute; placing the order several days ahead is the surest way to keep the slot you want rather than whatever is left by the morning.

Saint-Valentin is marked in France on 14 February, an ordinary working day with the rose as its flower. The 11 Red French Roses bouquet is the catalogue's classic answer to the date, a single colour and a round number that needs no further choosing.

8 March carries a different meaning in France: it is Journée internationale des droits des femmes, a day of political and social marking rather than a flower-giving custom. For Russian-speaking senders it remains one of the busiest days in the calendar all the same, which makes it worth checking first whether the woman receiving the bouquet in Paris is expecting 8 March or Saint-Valentin.

Western and Orthodox Easter coincide in around three years out of ten, and in around four years out of ten the Orthodox date falls a week later. A family that keeps the Orthodox calendar is worth asking about directly before booking Easter flowers for the wrong Sunday.

On 1 May the gift is muguet, lily of the valley, and for that one day private sellers can offer it without a trading licence, provided the sprigs are wild, sold without roots and without wrapping, under conditions each mairie sets locally. Neither muguet nor chrysanthemums appear in the Paris flower catalogue, so both are things to buy rather than order ahead online.

A chrysanthemum carries the opposite meaning for the rest of the year: in France it is the flower of Toussaint and of mourning, not one to send as a gift on any other occasion. That's worth knowing before reaching for it out of French flower etiquette habit rather than local custom. For 1 November itself, the All Saints' Day section covers the date on the Paris site.

A restaurant booking turns a bouquet into a prop timed to a moment: time is agreed with the restaurant administrator and the bouquet is brought for dessert or for the toast, which is what a date night delivery in Paris is built around.

For an apology or an anonymous delivery, the courier works with only a name and an address, nothing more. The card can carry a signature or none at all, and the courier adds nothing beyond what the sender wrote on it.

The florist photographs the finished bouquet before the courier sets off, and most Paris orders are delivered the same day they're placed; the speed for each bouquet sits on its own product card, with the full terms on the delivery page. Where there's no address to give, a phone number is enough to get the bouquet to the right door.

Two occasions round out the Paris calendar without a date fixed by the country: a birthday, which follows the recipient's own calendar, and a wedding anniversary, counted from the couple's day rather than the city's. Either is a reasonable place to start when nothing above quite fits the occasion in hand.