Pansies have an old fashioned feel about them, but who can resist their dear little faces peeking up at you with their vibrant colours and markings. Victorian greeting cards often featured pansies, which meant ’thinking of you’.

Pansies from Brides

In shades of purples, violets, maroons, oranges and yellows, they often have veining on the petals that look like cat whiskers. Violas (or heartsease) are a smaller version of pansies with the rear petals often being deep purple and the front petals being yellow, ‘cat’s whiskered’ in purple.

Cake from Brides

With their short stems, and short cut flower life, they could be used jumbled into tiny glasses, perhaps with violets for scent and grouped at various heights on a buffet table or on mirrored surface in a table setting. Surrounded by silver and shiny glassware their purple colours are enhanced.

Pansy Wedding Cake from Southern Living

Pick up the various purple and maroon colours in table accessories and you have the perfect flower for a purple/violet themed wedding. Imagine sugar pansies trailing down a white cake that has a ‘quilted’ look enhanced by silver balls and a soft mauve ribbon or a frosting dotted edge.

Group pots of heartsease or pansies en masse inside square, rectangular or round metal containers to hide the pots, marching down the centre of a rectangular table, or a large round vessel containing pots of pansies, violas and maidenhair fern, on a round table as the centrepiece. Or try them set in covered purple hued containers of various heights and widths. Again be generous and crowd the pots and they will look fantastic.

Pansie topped cupcakes from Brides

Imagine this look further enhanced by small individual wedding cakes decorated in various shades of purples, mauves and soft violets set at each place for dessert.

Punch from Martha Stewart

Group pots of violas in a square container to create a ‘carpet’ and use this on your entrance table with your seating arrangements in mauve card alongside.