Debs season in Ireland runs from early September into late October, which puts
every school in a county through a florist in about six weeks. That is the
reason the ordering advice on this page is two weeks and not two days.
A corsage from an Irish florist costs 25 to 55 euro. A buttonhole is 8 to 15.
Those bands have been steady for a few years and cover almost everything that is
not deliberately elaborate.
Wrist or pinned
Wrist wins on practicalities. It sits on an elastic or beaded band, it needs no
pins near a dress that cost several times what the flowers did, and it survives
a dance floor. A pinned corsage goes through fabric, which is a genuine problem
on satin, chiffon or anything beaded, and it tends to end up crooked by ten
o'clock.
The two other formats worth knowing about:
- A hair flower. A single bloom on a comb or a grip. Cheaper, weightless, and
the option most likely to still look right in the photographs at midnight.
- A handbag corsage. A small piece clipped to a clutch. Rare in Ireland,
useful when someone does not want anything on them at all.
If the dress has long sleeves, ask the florist before assuming a wrist band
works. The band sits on skin, not on fabric.
Matching without guessing
Bring the florist a photograph of the dress on a phone, and a swatch if the
dressmaker gave you one. Photographs of fabric lie about colour under shop
lighting, so say the name out loud as well: ivory, champagne, blush, dusky pink,
emerald, wine.
Two rules from people who make these for a living. Do not try to match the exact
shade of the dress, because a near miss looks worse than a deliberate contrast.
And white is not ivory. A pure white rose against an ivory dress reads as a
mistake in every photograph taken that evening.
Neutral flowers in cream, white and soft green work with almost any colour, which
is why so many corsages are made that way. If the dress is a strong colour,
either go neutral or go to a deeper tone of the same family.
The flowers that hold up: spray roses, lisianthus, spray carnations, waxflower
for texture, and dendrobium orchids where the budget allows. Orchids last
longest by a distance and photograph well. Avoid anything heavily scented, since
the corsage spends four hours near someone's face in a warm hotel function room.
A single spray rose or a small rose with one leaf and a wired stem, pinned to
the left lapel, stem pointing down. The pin goes in from behind the lapel and
comes back through so no metal shows.
Match it to the corsage rather than to the suit. A buttonhole picking up the
same rose as the corsage is the whole point of ordering them together, and it
costs less than ordering them separately from two shops.
Ordering, and the week itself
Two weeks out. A florist near three or four large schools has a hard week in
September, and everything for a Friday night is being made on the Friday
morning.
Give the florist the date, the collection time, the dress colour, the wrist size
if the person is small-framed, and whether a buttonhole is going with it. Ask
whether the band is elastic, pearl or ribbon, because a beaded band on a
seventeen-year-old's wrist is often the detail that gets remembered.
Collect on the evening before or the day itself. Store it in the fridge in its
box, away from the fruit drawer, and take it out about half an hour before
leaving. A corsage that has been sitting on a warm kitchen counter since Tuesday
will look like it.
There is more on why fruit finishes flowers, and on what fridge storage actually
does, on keeping flowers fresh.
The thing nobody says about corsages
It is dead by Sunday. Fifty euro for four hours is the deal being offered, and
about a third of them come off during the dancing and spend the rest of the night
on a table beside a pint glass.
Two ways around that, if the money matters. A dried or preserved corsage costs
about the same and keeps for years, and Irish florists have been making more of
them since dried flowers came back. Or drop to a hair flower at 15 to 25 euro
and put the difference somewhere it will be noticed.
Nobody at a debs has ever been judged on the size of their corsage. They have
occasionally been judged on turning up without a buttonhole for their date, so
agree who is buying what a fortnight out and be done with it.
