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European Floral Crowns

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The WUD World Wide festival provides an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the different cultures that make up our campus community through a showcase of performances, hands-on activities, displays from student organizations, and food from around the world. As part of regional representation of Europe, Students who attended could assemble their own floral wreaths or crowns. We made this flyer to provide attendees with some background information about when and why floral wreaths are worn in Europe.

Flower crowns have been a part of European culture and spring celebrations for millennia. After a long, dark European winter, flowers indicate the return of the growing season and symbolize fertility and new beginnings. To this day, many regions in Europe use flowers, and floral wreaths, to celebrate May Day and Midsummer.

In Sweden, the garland is called midsommarkrans, traditionally made from wildflowers from the garden or nearby woods and worn for Midsummer celebrations by men and women.

Italians also wear floral wreaths for graduation ceremonies instead of cap and tassels.

According to Swedish tradition, if you silently pick 7 different kinds of wildflower and put them under your pillow, you will dream of your future spouse!
In the U.K., on May 1, the May Queen wears a crown of flowers as she leads the May Day parade. People dance around a maypole, and the night ends with a bonfire.

In Poland, wreathmakers set their crowns with candles to float down river in the belief that a sunk, swirling, or floating wreath can tell the future.

File: WUD-International-Festival-1.pdf

In Spring 2026, European Studies provided some cultural resource support for the second annual WUD World Wide international festival “Mosaics of Cultures” hosted at the Wisconsin Union.

The WUD World Wide festival provides an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the different cultures that make up our campus community through a showcase of performances, hands-on activities, displays from student organizations, and food from around the world. As part of regional representation of Europe, Students who attended could assemble their own floral wreaths or crowns. We made this flyer to provide attendees with some background information about when, why, and where floral wreaths are worn in Europe.

We welcome you to celebrate the arrival of spring with your own floral crown.

You will need

  1. Flowers (fresh, plastic, or paper). Note: If you use fresh flowers you can store the wreath in the refrigerator in a plastic bag with a spritz of water to maintain freshness for days. Conversely, you can hang your fresh wreath in the sun to dry to have a dried floral wreath that lasts for years.
  2.  A long wire (to be used as the structure of the crown)
  3. Floral tape.
  4. Ribbons (optional)

Step one: Measure your head with the wire. Make the frame of the wreath a little bigger than your head.

Step two: Wrap floral tape around the wire from end to end so that the wire does not show. Bend the wire into loops at both ends. The wire can encircle itself with these loops or you can tie a ribbon around the wire loops to make an adjustable circumference for your frame.

Step Three: With the flowers, make small bouquets and use the floral tape to wrap the stems of the small bouquets to the wreath. Start at one end of the frame and place the bouquet so that the stems point towards the center of the wreath. The next bouquet covers the stems of the previous bouquet. Continue until the entire frame is covered with flowers!