What is The Number One Funeral Flower?
Choosing funeral flowers feels like an impossible task. You're grieving, overwhelmed, and the last thing you want to do is make another decision. You just want to know what's 'normal'. I get it. My name is Siobhan, and after 17 years of running Lily's Florist, I want to share some of what I've learned.
We get asked about funeral flowers more than you'd think. Not as much as "can you deliver today?" (yes, usually) or "do you deliver to [Dalby QLD]?" (100%, we've got 800+ partner florists now), but enough that I should have a proper answer ready to go.
Last Tuesday - no, Wednesday - Andrew and I were having dinner (Asha was at netball training, Ivy was supposedly doing homework but probably on Snapchat) and he goes "you know what's weird?" And I'm thinking he's about to tell me something about the business finances or that the Armidale team needs another person or something, but no. He goes "we send more sympathy flowers than anniversary flowers."
I didn't believe him. Like, that can't be right? So he pulls up the laptop right there at the dinner table, pasta going cold, and shows me. Our Florist's Choice Sympathy Bunch - the one where people basically say "I can't deal with choosing flowers right now, you do it" - is our 10th most popular product. Not sympathy product. Product. Out of everything we sell. For the last three years running.
10th.
Above "Happy Anniversary" roses. Above "Sorry I Stuffed Up" bouquets (yes, that's a real category, and yes, it sells like crazy around State of Origin season). Above new baby arrangements.
The Call That Started This Whole Train of Thought
Actually no, I need to back up. The reason we were even talking about this was because of a call I'd taken that many years ago. I recall this woman rang from Brisbane, and you know when someone's been crying for so long their voice sounds different? Like they've run out of proper tears but their body's still trying?
Her dad had died mowing the lawn. Sunday morning. Just... done. She kept saying "he wasn't a flowers person" and "Mum won't want a fuss" but also "I need to send something" and then she asked me - and this is what got me - "what's the normal flower for funerals?"
Normal.
Like there's a normal for your dad dying while doing something as mundane as mowing the bloody lawn.
White Lilies (The Answer Nobody Actually Wants)
So yeah, white lilies. Oriental lilies if we're being specific, which we usually aren't because when someone's asking about funeral flowers they don't need a botany lesson. White lilies are what everyone pictures. They're what you see in movies. They're what my grandmother would have called "proper funeral flowers."
They're also an absolute nightmare.
I'm not even joking. We had this partner florist in Cairns years ago who refused to stock them for about six months because she'd had three wedding dresses ruined by lily pollen in one season. That orange stuff? It doesn't come out. Ever. I've still got a shirt from when we had the shop in Kingscliff - 2008? 2009? - with lily pollen stains on it. Andrew keeps threatening to throw it out but I'm weirdly attached to it now.
But every single one of our partner florists stocks white lilies. All 800+ of them. Because when someone's world has properly fallen apart, when they're standing in their kitchen holding their phone and trying to figure out how to send love to a funeral they can't get to, white lilies make sense in a way that nothing else really does.
> Find out how we went from a shop to flowers online
What People Actually Order (This Surprised Me Too)
Here's the thing though. And this is what Andrew was trying to tell me at dinner while I was still processing the whole "death flowers outsell love flowers" thing. People don't actually order white lilies that much.
They order our Florist's Choice Sympathy Bunch.
Christina left us a review in May that said it perfectly: "A comforting gift when you can't be there." That's it. That's the whole thing. Not "beautiful white lilies" or "traditional funeral arrangement." Just... comfort. When you can't be there.
I pulled up more reviews while Andrew was loading the dishwasher (badly, he always puts the bowls in wrong). Janet from last month: "The flowers I ordered were delivered on time and my sister was very pleased when she received them. She rang me to say the arrangement was beautiful and the flowers were very fresh and colourful."
Colourful.
Not white.
Why This Makes Me Think About That Garage in Pottsville
We started offering the Florist's Choice option in... 2011? Maybe 2012? We were still in the Pottsville house, the one where we'd converted the garage into an office. The air con barely worked and you could hear every single car that drove past, but we thought we were so professional with our proper phone system and everything.
Anyway, we kept getting these calls. Crying people. Angry people. People who were trying so hard to hold it together that you could hear them gripping the phone. And they'd all ask variations of the same thing: "What should I send?"
Not "what do you have?" or "what's appropriate?" but "what SHOULD I send?" Like we were the grief police or something.
One afternoon - it was stinking hot, I was pregnant with Ivy, and I'd just had three of these calls in a row - I said to Andrew "what if we just... made the choice for them?"
He looked at me like I'd suggested we start selling hamburgers instead of flowers. "People want to choose their own flowers," he said.
"Do they though?" I asked. "Or do they just want someone to tell them it's going to be okay?"
The Truth About Funeral Flowers (That Took Me 17 Years to Learn)
My grandmother died in 2019. Port Macquarie Hospital, the one that overlooks the car park but if you stand right at the window you can kind of see the ocean. Not that she could by then.
The flowers started arriving at Mum's house the next day in Taree. Some were white lilies, yes. The proper funeral flowers Nan would have expected. But there were also:
- Bright yellow roses from her bridge club ladies
- Purple irises from the neighbour who remembered Nan grew them in the 70s
- This absolutely mental tropical arrangement from my cousin in Cairns that looked like it should be at a beach party, not a funeral
We all stood there in Mum's kitchen, looking at this riot of colour and completely inappropriate tropical thing, and started laughing. Proper laughing. The kind where you're not sure if you're laughing or crying anymore.
That's when I got it. The number one funeral flower isn't white lilies. It's whatever shows up.
What We Tell People Now (When They Actually Ask)
Raewyn said it best in her review: "Those delivered far exceeded my expectations - were delivered promptly, and gratefully received."
Promptly. Gratefully. Not "were the perfect white lilies" or "looked exactly like the picture." Just... they arrived when they were supposed to and someone was grateful they did.
So when people call and ask what they should send, here's what I tell them:
If you knew them well enough to know their favourite flower, send that. Doesn't matter if it's "appropriate" or not. My pop loved birds of paradise because they looked like "proper tropical plants, not these weak English things." Guess what we sent to his funeral?
If you don't know them that well, or you're too overwhelmed to make another decision (because grief is exhausting and everyone wants you to make decisions about everything), order the Florist's Choice. Standard size is $74.50, it's perfectly respectable. You can go Deluxe or Premium if you want, but honestly? Standard is fine. The size of the flowers doesn't equal the size of your grief.
If you're immediate family or really close, maybe go Premium or Extra Large. Not because you need to, but because you'll second-guess yourself later if you don't. Trust me on this one.
The Bit Where I'm Supposed to Wrap This Up Neatly
But here's the thing - grief isn't neat. It's messy and weird and sometimes you're crying in Woolies because they've moved the tea bags and your dead aunt always drank that specific brand of tea and why did they have to move the bloody tea bags?
Our Florist's Choice Sympathy Bunch is our 10th most popular product because sometimes the kindest thing we can do for someone who's grieving is take one decision away. Just one. Our partner florists get it. They know that when that order comes through, they're not just making a bunch of flowers. They're standing in for someone who can't be there, who's trying to send love across that impossible distance that death creates.
White lilies might be the "proper" funeral flower. But the right funeral flower? It's the one that arrives. It's the one that says "I'm thinking of you" when someone can't form any other words. It's the bright yellow roses that make no sense at a funeral but perfect sense if you knew the person. It's the Florist's Choice bunch that arrives promptly and is gratefully received.
After 17 years, thousands of orders, countless conversations with people who are having the worst day of their life, that's what I know. The number one funeral flower is white lilies. But the right funeral flower is whatever helps you say what you can't say.
Even if that's a completely inappropriate tropical arrangement that makes everyone laugh when they really need to.
Need to send flowers for a funeral? Our team in Armidale (still can't believe we ended up there) answers the phones 6 days a week. They've heard it all, seriously. There's no wrong way to order funeral flowers. Well, except that one time someone tried to send a cactus, but that's another story. Order our Florist's Choice Sympathy Bunch here or call us. We've got you.