Lily of the Valley Meaning: Kate Middleton Chose It — Why This May Flower Outranks Roses at Royal Weddings
Lily of the valley means ‘return of happiness’ — and that meaning has driven its royal wedding bouquet appearances, French May Day tradition, and Christian symbolism for centuries.
Lily of the valley is one of the most deceptive flowers in existence. It stands barely 20 centimetres tall, blooms for just a few weeks in May, and carries bells so small you could mistake them for drops of rain. Yet it has appeared in the bouquets of Princess Grace Kelly, Catherine Princess of Wales, and Meghan Markle. In France, millions of sprigs are exchanged on a single morning each year. In Christian tradition, it grew from the tears of the Virgin Mary. And it has been documented as meaning one precise thing since at least 1825: the return of happiness.
That meaning is unusually specific for a flower — and unusually apt. This guide covers what Convallaria majalis symbolises, why it has become the defining bridal bloom of royal weddings, its significance across Christian, French, and Celtic traditions, and everything you need to know about giving it as a gift. For wider context, visit our complete flower symbolism guide.
See also our guide to holly meaning: symbolism, winter traditions.
What Does Lily of the Valley Symbolise?
The primary meaning of lily of the valley is the return of happiness — and the origin is documented. Henry Phillips in his 1825 work Floral Emblems was the first to record this meaning formally, describing the flower as an emblem of restored joy after sorrow [1]. Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers (1884) then consolidated it, listing “return of happiness, sweetness, humility” as the flower’s combined meanings — three ideas that have travelled together ever since [2].
The meaning makes immediate sense. Convallaria majalis blooms in May, after winter. Its appearance in woodland glades signals that warmth and light have returned. “Return of happiness” is less an arbitrary Victorian assignment and more an observation about what the flower actually does.
An old European folk legend makes this explicit. According to the story, the nightingale refused to return to the woodland until lily of the valley was in bloom. When the flower finally appeared each May, the bird came back and began to sing — and both flower and bird were understood as the literal harbingers of returned happiness. The legend doesn’t just explain the meaning; it encodes it in narrative form: the flower is the signal that joy is on its way back.
Alongside “return of happiness,” lily of the valley also carries purity, humility, and sincere love — meanings that flow directly from the flower’s appearance. White bells, small and nodding downward, a scent wildly out of proportion to their size. You don’t notice lily of the valley until you are standing next to it — and then it’s impossible to ignore. I’ve noticed that people who receive it as a gift remember it specifically: not just that they received flowers, but which flowers they were. That outsized sensory impression is part of why the “return of happiness” meaning took hold so well. This flower doesn’t merely appear in May; it announces itself. That combination of quiet power and outward modesty is precisely what purity and humility look like in flower form.
See also our guide to tulip meaning: symbolism, colour meanings.
Lily of the valley is also one of the two May birth flowers alongside hawthorn — confirmed by the Old Farmer’s Almanac [3] and Penn State Extension [4]. If you’re choosing a gift for someone born in May, this is their official birth flower — which adds a personal layer of meaning to the gesture.
For more on this, see spider lily meaning: symbolism, colours.
Lily of the Valley in Wedding Tradition
The “return of happiness” meaning turns out to be nearly perfect for weddings. It doesn’t say “I am happy” — it says “happiness is returning.” For a bride, that framing is exactly right: this is the beginning of something, a restoration, a new flourishing. That is almost certainly why lily of the valley has appeared in royal bridal bouquets across three generations.
Princess Grace Kelly, 1956 made perhaps the most striking choice. At her wedding to Prince Rainier III of Monaco in April of that year, Kelly carried only a small, simple posy of lily of the valley — no mixed arrangement, no structured cascading bouquet of the kind royal brides conventionally carried. For the era, this was a genuinely unusual decision. She is also recorded as having left the bouquet on the altar of the Chapel of Sainte-Dévote after the ceremony [5].
You might also find may birth flower helpful here.
Catherine, Princess of Wales, 2011 made the language-of-flowers meaning entirely explicit. As Flower Duet’s account of the 2011 royal bouquet records, florist Shane Connolly specifically cited lily of the valley’s Victorian meaning — “return of happiness” — as the reason for its central place in the arrangement [5]. Alongside it, Sweet William was included: its floriography meaning is “gallantry,” and its name a quiet personal tribute to Prince William. The bouquet was composed to carry meaning, not merely to look beautiful.
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Meghan Markle, 2018 continued and deepened the tradition. As Blooming Haus documents, her bouquet — designed by Philippa Craddock — placed lily of the valley alongside forget-me-nots hand-picked by Prince Harry from their Kensington Palace garden, because they were Princess Diana’s favourite flower [6]. Lily of the valley had also featured in Diana’s own 1981 cascading bridal bouquet, so Markle’s inclusion was a deliberate echo across three decades.
A practical note: lily of the valley is intensely fragrant, which makes it appealing for enclosed venues. But it is also highly toxic to cats, dogs, horses, and humans [7]. Every part of the plant — including the water in which cut stems sit — contains cardiac glycosides that can cause vomiting, arrhythmia, and, in severe cases, cardiac arrest. If you are including lily of the valley in a wedding or any event, keep arrangements well out of reach of pets and children. The vase water is not safe either.
For more flowers with layered wedding meaning, read about peony meaning and wedding flowers and orchid meaning for special occasions.
We cover this in more depth in azalea meaning: symbolism, passion.
Lily of the Valley Symbolism Across Cultures
The “return of happiness” meaning travels well — but across different cultures, it takes on different shapes.
Christian Tradition: Tears of the Virgin Mary
According to Marian legend, when the Virgin Mary wept at the foot of the cross, her tears fell onto the earth and turned into lily of the valley. This is the origin of the flower’s devotional names: Our Lady’s Tears and Mary’s Tears. The visual logic is hard to resist — the small, downward-nodding white bells really do look like a cluster of suspended teardrops. A parallel tradition holds that the flowers first grew from Eve’s tears when she was expelled from the Garden of Eden, locating the flower’s origins at the first moment of human grief.
You will sometimes see the Song of Solomon quoted in connection with lily of the valley: “I am a rose of Sharon, and a lily of the valleys” (Song of Solomon 2:1). This association deserves a caveat: biblical scholars note that the “lily of the valleys” in that verse almost certainly refers to a different plant entirely — possibly an anemone, hyacinth, or tulip native to the Levant. Convallaria majalis is a northern European woodland plant; it did not grow in ancient Israel [8]. The name was borrowed by Christian tradition, not inherited from Scripture.
France: La Fête du Muguet
France has the most specific and most public relationship with lily of the valley of any country in the world. La Fête du Muguet — the Feast of the Lily of the Valley — takes place on 1 May each year. The tradition is traced to 1561, when King Charles IX began giving sprigs of muguet to all the ladies of his court as a porte-bonheur (good luck charm). The previous spring, during a visit to the Dauphiné region, he had received a sprig himself and been charmed by the gesture. The following May, he extended it to his court, reportedly declaring “let it be done so every year.” He kept his word [9].
Today, la Fête du Muguet coincides with la Fête du Travail (Labour Day) on 1 May. Sprigs of lily of the valley are sold on almost every pavement across France. French law makes 1 May the one day per year when anyone can sell lily of the valley tax-free, which produces a kind of national informal market: florists, street vendors, and ordinary citizens selling small bouquets to passersby. There is something quietly moving about an entire country exchanging the same flower on the same morning, honouring a tradition that has run unbroken for over four centuries.
We cover this in more depth in hibiscus meaning: symbolism, national identity.
Celtic and Scottish Folklore
In Ireland and Scotland, lily of the valley is known as fairy bells — the belief being that only fairies can hear them ring. The flower’s stems were called fairy ladders, the handholds by which the little people descended into their woodland glades. Gardeners of earlier centuries would step carefully around clearings where lily of the valley grew thickly, unwilling to disturb what they considered fairy ground. In the Celtic calendar, 1 May is Beltane — the festival marking the beginning of summer — and lily of the valley, blooming at exactly that moment, was among the flowers associated with its celebrations.
The Glastonbury Legend
A British folk tradition connected to Glastonbury holds that when Joseph of Arimathea came to England bearing the Holy Grail, his tears of grief fell on the hillside and became lily of the valley. The story layers the Marian weeping legend onto one of Britain’s most sacred landscapes: the same flower that grew from Mary’s tears at the cross also marks the ground where the Grail was brought to rest. Whether this is an ancient local legend or a later elaboration of the Mary’s Tears story, it shows how lily of the valley accumulated sacred meaning at each place it landed.
We cover this in more depth in bleeding heart meaning: symbolism, romance.
The Spiritual Meaning of Lily of the Valley
The flower’s spiritual vocabulary is largely encoded in its traditional names. “Our Lady’s Tears” and “Mary’s Tears” locate it in Marian devotion. “Ladder to Heaven” and “Jacob’s Ladder” connect it to the biblical image in Genesis 28:12 — Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.
That second name has a visual logic. A stem of lily of the valley carries its bells in an ascending row: the lowest open first, the uppermost still closed, like rungs. In the medieval imagination, spiritual aspiration was understood as upward movement, and the flower’s architecture made it a natural symbol of the soul climbing toward God.
You might also find peace lily meaning: symbolism, spiritual helpful here.
Lily of the valley was among the defining plants of the Mary’s Garden tradition — the cultivation of monastic and convent gardens dedicated to the Virgin Mary, which flourished across medieval Europe [10]. In these gardens, every plant carried a specific Marian association. Lily of the valley’s presence was overdetermined: it meant Our Lady’s purity, her tears, and her spiritual ascent simultaneously. It was, in the medieval sense, a theologically efficient plant.
The combination of humility (nodding, downward-facing bells) and aspiration (the climbing stem with its ascending flowers) gives lily of the valley a distinctive spiritual character. It does not assert itself. It is often the most overlooked thing in the woodland — and yet its scent carries across entire glades. In both Christian and folk tradition, that paradox is the point.
What Does Lily of the Valley Mean as a Gift?
For most purposes, “return of happiness” does the work. Lily of the valley is an appropriate gift for:
- May birthdays — as the official May birth flower [3][4], it’s the natural choice for anyone born in the month
- Weddings — in bridal arrangements, bridesmaid posies, or as a gift for the wedding party
- New beginnings — the “return” framing suits someone emerging from a difficult period, starting a new chapter, or marking a recovery
- 1 May in France — if you’re in France on May Day, giving muguet is simply what one does
Toxicity warning — read this before giving lily of the valley to anyone with pets or young children. The ASPCA Poison Control database classifies Convallaria majalis as toxic to cats, dogs, and horses [7]. The plant contains cardiac glycosides — primarily convallatoxin — that cause vomiting, arrhythmia, low blood pressure, and in severe cases cardiac arrest. All parts of the plant are toxic: flowers, leaves, stems, roots, and berries. The toxic compounds also leach into vase water, making even a glass of cut-flower water potentially dangerous to a cat or small dog that drinks from it. If giving lily of the valley as a gift, mention this. It is not a flower to leave unattended around animals or toddlers.
Lily of the Valley in History
The documented history of lily of the valley as a cultivated, symbolically meaningful flower is unusually well-sourced.
Henry Phillips’ Floral Emblems (1825) provides the earliest known formal assignment of the “return of happiness” meaning [1]. This predates the Victorian floriography boom by a generation and suggests the meaning was already in circulation in British garden culture before the language-of-flowers genre took hold. Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers (1884) — the most widely read of all Victorian flower dictionaries — then fixed these meanings in the popular imagination, listing “return of happiness, sweetness, humility” alongside the additional note “tears of the Virgin Mary” [2].
Related: dahlia meaning: symbolism, inner strength.
By the mid-19th century, lily of the valley was firmly established in bridal arrangements across Britain and Europe. Its combination of white purity, delicate scale, and extraordinary fragrance made it well-suited to the intimate posies and cascading bouquets of the era. The Victorian association of brides with innocence and new beginnings mapped directly onto the flower’s own meanings in a way that felt, and still feels, entirely natural.
A historical footnote worth knowing: the same cardiac glycosides that make lily of the valley dangerous were used as heart medicines from at least the 15th century. John Gerard, in his 1597 Herball, claimed that distilled lily of the valley flowers could “restore speech to those with a dumb palsy.” A 2021 review in Frontiers in Pharmacology documents the use of convallatoxin as a cardiotonic agent in European medical traditions — regulatory in small doses, potentially lethal in large ones [11]. As with foxglove and opium poppy, the line between ornament and medicine in the pre-modern garden was thin.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is lily of the valley toxic?
Yes — highly toxic to cats, dogs, horses, and humans. All parts of Convallaria majalis contain cardiac glycosides, and the compounds leach into vase water too. The ASPCA classifies it as toxic to cats, dogs, and horses [7]. Symptoms in animals and humans include vomiting, low blood pressure, and irregular heartbeat; severe cases can result in cardiac arrest. Keep it away from pets and children.
Why do brides carry lily of the valley?
Because its primary meaning is “return of happiness” — a meaning that frames a wedding as the beginning of a new, flourishing chapter rather than a single moment of joy. Princess Grace Kelly (1956), Catherine Princess of Wales (2011), and Meghan Markle (2018) all carried it, and the florists involved have explicitly cited the language-of-flowers meaning as the reason [5][6].
What is the French May Day tradition of lily of the valley?
On 1 May — la Fête du Muguet — French people give sprigs of lily of the valley as a good-luck charm. The tradition dates to 1561, when King Charles IX began gifting sprigs to the ladies of his court after receiving one himself the previous spring [9]. French law permits anyone to sell lily of the valley tax-free on that day, creating an informal national street market in the flower that continues across the country every year.
Sources
- Phillips, Henry. Floral Emblems (1825). Internet Archive. [linked inline above]
- Greenaway, Kate. Language of Flowers (1884). Project Gutenberg. [linked inline above]
- The Old Farmer’s Almanac. “May Birth Flowers: Lily of the Valley and Hawthorn.” [linked inline above]
- Penn State Extension. “May Birth Flower: Lily of the Valley.” [linked inline above]
- Flower Duet. “Catherine’s Royal Wedding Bouquet Featuring Lily of the Valley.” [linked inline above]
- Blooming Haus. “Royal Wedding Bouquets Through the Ages.” [linked inline above]
- ASPCA Animal Poison Control. “Lily of the Valley.” [linked inline above]
- GotQuestions.org. “What is the lily of the valley in Song of Solomon?” gotquestions.org
- Frenchly. “Why Do the French Sell Lily of the Valley on May 1?” frenchly.us
- Thursd. “Lily of the Valley: Symbolism, History and Meaning.” thursd.com
- Frontiers in Pharmacology / PMC. “Convallatoxin.” [linked inline above]
