With so much emphasis on the look of your wedding, it can be easy to overlook your wedding scent. Smell is a very powerful sense and the fragrance of your wedding venues can really make a difference to the atmosphere of your big day. If chosen carefully, the scent you choose for your wedding will bring back fond memories of your wedding day for you and your guests for the rest of your lives.
Your wedding scent will be a combination of your own chosen fragrance, those of the bridal party, the scent of your wedding flowers, and any room fragrance that you decide to use.
Bridal party perfumes
Choosing the right perfume for your wedding is one of the most exciting aspects of your wedding preparations. You need to choose a fragrance that will last all day, and that reflects your personality, as well as the type of wedding you are having.
Many brides feel they can be more daring and choose a stronger fragrance for their wedding than they would generally wear during the day, and this is certainly the case. When you greet your guests in the receiving line, you want them to pick up your distinctive perfume, although you don’t want to overpower them.
Some fragrance companies allow you to create your own unique perfume for your special day, with the help of a professional. Perhaps you could take your bridesmaids with you, or even make this activity part of your hen party. The types of fragrance that are generally popular with brides are fresh floral scents such as orange blossom.
A recent trend in bridal perfume is fragrance combining, where two complementary scents are used, one on the front of the body, and one on the hair and back. This gives the bride a beautifully scented aura, with varying depths of fragrance. With fragrance combining you might want your bridesmaids to wear the lighter of the two perfumes.
Flower scent
When you are choosing your flowers, be mindful of their scent as well as their appearance; you don’t want them to clash with your perfume or any other forms of room fragrance. If you are having an outdoor wedding, or have a very large venue, you can probably afford to have highly scented flowers. If however, you are having a small, intimate venue, strongly perfumes flowers may be a little overpowering.
Your florist should ensure that your flower scents complement each other, but talk to them about other fragrances you will use at your wedding to be certain these will work together and not against each other.
Room fragrance
There are a number of ways to add scent to your wedding venues, both for your ceremony and your reception. Using a perfumed room spray for the ceremony will add impact when your guests first arrive, and will set the mood for the day.
Burning scented candles is another popular option. These can be incorporated into your table centrepieces as well as your ceremony decorations for a romantic feel. Soft, floral fragrances such as white hyacinth are ideal for daytime summer weddings. More sultry scents with notes of vanilla and sandalwood can be used in the evening or for a winter wedding.
Some brides are also choosing to use a perfumed spray on their table linen and napkins to maintain the fragrance throughout the reception. A popular choice for a table scent is lime, which is a fresh, clean fragrance. Lime can also be incorporated into your floral centrepieces. An alternative scented centrepiece could be a glass bowl of water, fragranced and coloured with rose oil, and decorated with rose petals and floating candles.
