Tulips & Lilies for the Holy Name of Mary: Latin Mass Altar Flowers

For the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost and the feast of the Holy Name of Mary, the parish where we formerly held the Traditional Latin Mass, asked me to do flowers for their 25th Anniversary Celebration. This was an opportunity to do some TLM outreach. Anyone who runs in traditional circles, understands the continual need to work to keep everything congenial in a small Catholic community. I was honored to do flowers on this special day. Fortunately, two very talented ladies volunteered to do the flowers at our regular TLM parish, so this freed me up to focus on St. Mary's Church.

Our local bulb farm, once again, generously donated lilies and tulips for the occassion. Before starting the arrangements I picked up a dozen white roses and found a field of Queen Anne's lace to forage. The bulb farm donated some (gigantic!) pink lilies, white lilies and soft pink tulips. For greenery I cut fir, cedar, ivy, hydrangea, laurel and pittosporum.

Before working with tulips, I strongly recommend you read my post on arrangements for the First Solemn High Mass reception and watch Michael Gaffney's video on how to prepare tulips so they don't grow out of your arrangements!

The altar guild requested a large arrangement to go in front of the table altar and two more for the pedestals to the sides of the tabernacle.

I had only just watched a Michael Gaffney video where one of his students designed a dutch flemish centerpiece. This was the inspiration for the semicircular arrangement at the base of the statue of Our Lady.