What flower motif was traditionally associated with Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding dress?

The flower motif traditionally associated with Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding dress is orange blossom.

Queen Victoria’s white satin wedding dress was decorated with orange-blossom motifs, and she also wore an orange-blossom wreath. Orange blossom had long been associated with bridal purity, fertility, and good fortune, making it an appropriate decorative symbol for a nineteenth-century royal wedding.

The dress itself included lace made in England and became one of the most influential wedding gowns in modern fashion history. Victoria’s choice of white helped popularize white bridal clothing among affluent brides, although white dresses had existed before 1840 and were not instantly adopted by everyone.

Orange blossom is sometimes confused with myrtle in royal-wedding history. Myrtle became a particularly important British royal bridal symbol after Queen Victoria planted a myrtle cutting from her daughter’s bouquet at Osborne House. The motifs and plants are related to bridal tradition but are not the same thing.