My cousin Bevin got married Saturday at a barn venue in Weaverville and somewhere between the processional and the first toast I found myself crouched behind a cake table holding an aerosol can the florist had left in a milk crate. The can was teal. The brand name, in a font designed by a man who has never met a bride, said CROWNING GLORY. Below that, in smaller letters, it said FLORAL FINISH. Below that, in even smaller letters, it said the actual ingredients, and reader — I have not slept since.
Crowning Glory is a real product. It is the spray. If you have been to a June wedding in the last forty years, you have inhaled it. It is what the florists use to make the peonies look photo-ready until the last dance, and the women who work in walk-in coolers know about it the way mechanics know about asbestos.
I will not retype the full ingredient panel here because my husband Coleman has asked me, repeatedly and with feeling, to stop reading aerosol cans aloud at dinner. But I will say this: there are three things on that label that I had to look up, two things on it that are also in my father-in-law’s leaf blower, and one thing whose only other appearance in my life has been the underside of a 1991 Buick. This is what is being held six inches from a bride’s face for forty minutes of photos in a hot field.
I posted about it that night in a Facebook group called Brides Against the Aerosol (we have 11,400 members, most of them florists in recovery), and within an hour a woman named Tanith who runs an organic floral co-op in Brevard sent me a screenshot of the safety data sheet. She told me that real wedding-grade Crowning Glory is what’s known in the industry as a “holding lacquer,” which is the same word they use for hairspray, varnish, and — Tanith’s words, not mine — “the stuff they put on the inside of a Pringles can.” I have not eaten a Pringle since Saturday and I will not be starting tonight.
My friend Marisol, who has done the flowers for 60+ Asheville-area weddings and is basically a chemist because her dad worked at a paint store, told me that the spray is also used on the boutonnieres, the flower-girl crowns, the tossed bouquet, and — she dropped her voice here — the petals scattered on the aisle that the children walk through barefoot. The children. Walking. Through. The lacquered. Petals. I am asking every June bride reading this to please go look at her contract.
Now, I’m not saying you have to cancel your wedding. Bevin’s wedding was beautiful. The light was perfect. Her dress, which she sewed herself from a vintage curtain my Aunt Robynne had been hoarding since Carter, was a triumph. I gave the toast. I cried during the toast. I cried again during the father-daughter dance, and then a third time, privately, when I realized the rose petals on the cake had a faint gloss to them I now understand to be petrochemical.
What you can do, easily, is make your bouquet from herbs and dried sourdough. I know that sounds insane. It is not. I made the centerpieces for Bevin’s reception out of rosemary, thyme, two heads of ornamental kale from my garden, and four small wreaths of sourdough I baked the morning of (sourdough time is not an ingredient, it is a process, and salt is a mineral, not a chemical). Three different aunts asked if they could take the centerpieces home. One aunt ate hers in the parking lot. Tell me a Crowning Glory peony has ever inspired that.
Bevin doesn’t know yet. I’ll tell her when she’s back from Costa Rica. I’ve already started a Google Doc called “Bevin Detox — Post Honeymoon” and the first bullet point is “Burdock root, three weeks, no questions.” The second bullet is “Throw away the preserved bouquet, I am sorry, I know your mother had it laminated, it has to go.” The third is just the word breathe, twice, with a heart.
If you are getting married this June — and statistically, several of you reading this are — please, I am begging, ask your florist what’s in the can. If they hesitate, if they laugh, if they say “oh that’s just the spray,” run. Run in your veil. The peonies will understand.