The man who made the bouquets for the weddings of Kate Middleton and Camilla Parker Bowles holds a view that runs against everything any wedding fair will show you. Shane Connolly, the Irish florist, says large bridal bouquets are far too heavy to carry for most women. He prefers simpler and smaller arrangements.

And it is not only a question of weight. A bouquet is not an ornament standing off to one side - it is held in the hands in front of the body, for three or four hours, in photographs that outlast the day. What changes the picture most is not the number of flowers, but the length of the stems.

Long stems, a vertical line

Arrangements with long stems add verticality to the whole figure and, put simply, lengthen the silhouette. That is not a fashion statement, it is geometry: a round ball of flowers creates a horizontal line at the waist and cuts the body in two. A long stem falling downwards extends the line.

The choice, then, depends not only on the dress and on taste, but also on height, build and facial features. Not every bouquet works the same way for every bride - a sentence you will rarely hear in a florist's shop that sells by the stem.

One flower, full effect

Arrangements using a single type of flower, usually with long stems, have the power to complete the whole look without stealing attention from the bride. Yellow craspedia is one such choice - simple, almost graphic, and completely unlike the white everybody expects.

When the choice is made the day before

The best story on the whole list is Carla's, a bride whose bouquet was born at the last moment. The day before the wedding she went to the florists and found the roses were far paler than she had expected. Rather than take them as they were, the florist suggested she choose something else on the spot.

„I saw spectacular orange chrysanthemums, so arm in arm we made the bouquet in a few minutes and I took it home very happy,” she says. Chrysanthemums - a flower that around here traditionally goes somewhere else entirely - as a bridal bouquet. That is a decision that requires you to fear other people's opinions less than your own eye.

Carnation, calla and rose - three choices with a history

Carnations were used in ancient Greece and Rome in rituals and celebrations connected to love, which makes choosing them today feel slightly magical. The best known are red and white, but there are many others - like the peach shade chosen for Lucia's bouquet.

Callas come from South Africa and reached Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. The interesting fact is that the flower itself is not actually a flower, but a large leaf surrounding a spike of many tiny blooms. Their durability made them a favourite among florists.

With roses the numbers are dizzying: there are over thirty thousand varieties in the world, of which around three and a half thousand are wild species, while between two and three thousand varieties are commercially available. The most common in bridal bouquets are hybrid tea roses, garden roses, English roses and spray roses. Long stems allow for a very vertical composition.

What decides it is not the list

There are two more choices worth mentioning. Tuberose - a flower whose sweet, heady scent made it sought after in perfumery, with long, flexible stems ideal for elongated arrangements. And sculptural bouquets, like Monica's: green amaranth giving movement as it falls, white anthuriums bringing structure, and long-stemmed hydrangeas providing volume.

The conclusion is not which flower is in fashion this season. The conclusion is that the man who worked for the British royal family recommends smaller bouquets - while the industry sells bigger ones. The only question is whose advice is free, and whose is charged by the stem.