Valentine’s day is fast approaching and preparations are well under way, with stacks of boxes waiting to be filled with wonderfully romantic gifts. Our new Valentine specials are up and are going down well, we’ve already had some orders for the cool single rose treats.

Now that InterRose.co.uk supplies the whole of the UK with a shower of wonderful Valentine’s Day gifts every year, people often forget its marvellous history:

1. Jack Valentine

This is a rather strange tradition from Norfolk. This basically involves a father christmas type figure leaving presents for both children and adults. There was also sometimes an opposite character who would play pranks on someone, often by teasing them with a present and then snatching it away. We wouldn’t advise reviving this tradition with your Valentine, we know our gifts are tempting but you need to resist the urge to keep them for yourself!

2. The Night of Sevens

This is an old Chinese celebration similar to Valentine’s day which occurs on a day when it is said that two stars usually separated by the milky way cross this ‘river’ and meet. It seems that it to involved girls practising ‘domestic arts’ in the hope of finding a good husband so it’s no wonder it has changed a bit in modern times.

3. Friends day

Some countries (including finland) use the day for the celebration of friendship more than romantic love, so there are a few places in the world where you could get away with watching the [insert favourite sport here] come the fourteenth. Whether you are celebrating friends or a partner, they are sure to appreciate it if you win our valentine’s day competition by simply telling us what you think “T.R.R.S.” should stand for.

4. Lupercalia

This was an ancient pagan Roman festival of fertility, celebrating the mythical she wolf which mothered Romulus and Remus; the former being the founder of Rome in legend. This festival occurred on the thirteenth to fifteenth of February, overlapping the later celebration of valentine’s day. It also involved slapping people with blood covered strips of sacrificed goat hide though so things have changed a bit.

5. Courtly love

It is widely accepted that the association of Valentine’s day with romantic love began in the middle ages with the idea of courtly love where men and women were supposed to show subtle admiration for each other while staying ‘just friends’,  but often ended up leading to more ;p. Before this it is likely to have been a more general celebration of all kinds of love, including family.

6. Mail

In the eighteen hundreds the way Valentine’s cards and gifts were given changed and people began sending them by mail, beginning the trend of sending them anonymously (as well as, shall we say, less reserved messages).

7. Red roses

Roses have long been symbolic of love, with various cultures using them at weddings and other events.

Originally the white rose was used as the symbol of (particularly new) love as it symbolised purity and innocence which were expected at the time. Various legends from around Europe in particular involve roses changing between white and red, with red representing passion, possibly inspired by blushing. The red rose became more popular when people began to secretively give them as gifts, allowing them to use a colour with a less subtle message.

8. Saint Valentine

This is a bit of a mysterious one as no-one actually knows for sure who he was. There are actually records of three saints named Valentine associated with the date of February the fourteenth, maybe they are really a trio of romantic superheroes!

All we know for sure is that the legend involves a man defying the will of an emperor and risking (well… receiving) death to marry young couples. You might not be willing to go that far to be romantic this valentines day but I’m sure your Valentine won’t hold it against you, and will find an “I Love You”  balloon just as thoughtful.

9. Valentine cards

Originally, Valentine greetings often took the form of a spoken message or a gift but some time after fourteen hundred written messages began to appear. These eventually gave way to elaborate cards with lace and ribbons, often having a personal message added to the inside.

10. Electronic valentines

Want to send someone a gift this Valentine’s day but don’t want to ruin the surprise by suspiciously asking for their address just before? You could always send virtual roses completely free! Embrace the future and enter the matrix.

This post is titled “about blooming time” because it’s about blooming time we decided upon the winner of our “I Love Eros Day because…..” competition.

It’s been nearly 3 months since August the 14th and all of the Rockmantic Godsarians of Love (AKA all the staff of The Red Rose Society) have sufficiently recovered enough from our annual Eros Day bash (Except for Zeus that is, who still has a sore head) to pick the winner of our wonderfully exciting, romantic, original and sweet Eros Day 2011 competition.

However before we announce the winner please allow us to say a really big THANK YOU to each and every one of you who entered this year, unfortunately there can only be one winner and…. Drums Rolls please…… It’s the very lucky and lovely Gail Lowery, who won despite a few tantrums and thunder bolts being thrown out of the aforementioned pram of Zeus.

Gail won because her acronyminal (is that a word?) entry nailed the very essence and meaning of Eros Day for us with her blooming better late than never winning entry below:

I Love Eros Day Because… its Exciting Romantic Original & Sweet!!!!

Thankyou Gail, you have won a tantalisingly wonderful year of gifts and don’t forget like Psyche herself you are in our eyes immortalized forever and it goes without saying of course but you are invited and your +1 to all our future Eros Day bashes on the 14th of August on top of Mount Olympus every year… See you there… if you a dare!!!

Anyway that’s all folks, our Eros Day 2011 competition is officially over for another year, long live our Valentines Day 2012 competition.

Before we announce the winner we must say a big thank you to everyone who entered the competition, to see a full list of entries please click here.

And a further big thank you to everyone who helped us in our hour of need by commenting on our post The Red Rose Society Needs You!

OK with all the thank you’s out of the way all that’s left for us to do is announce who the winner of our Big Valentines Day 2011 twitter friendly “My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose because…” competition is :-

The lovely & glowing Charmaine Brown

Here is her sweetly played entry in all it’s glory  :-

My Love is like a Red, Red Rose,
Sweet and lovely and it shows
Why he loves me no one knows
But Im the one who truly glows
Just like a Red, Red Rose!

Thanks for reading and if you would like to enter our next competition to celebrate Eros Day on August the 14th 2011 please click here.

Well wonder no more because we have a sneak preview of what we believe Kate Middleton will be holding on her big day and it’s called The Great British Bridal Bouquet because it’s full of the nations favourite flowers… Red, White and Blue Roses.

We realize of course Kate Middleton’s bridal bouquet will probably be a little more traditional than this, but wouldn’t it be a wonderful surprise if her bridal bouquet matched all the red white and blue bunting stretched across the street parties of Great Britian?

By the way… if you’re reading this Kate, and you have changed your mind as to your bridal bouquet (it’s a Princess’es prerogative you know) you’re not too late to order one of our Great British Bouquets online from… you guessed it… The Great British Online Florist of Choice.

Thanks for reading everyone and all that’s left to do, is wish Kate and Will on behalf of The Red Rose Society and all our members, all the very best and that their lives be filled with happiness, charity work and heirs to the throne.

Ohhh not forgetting of course…. Long live the Queen

Just enough time to tell you that as always The Red Rose Society is busy going the extra mile delivering throughout  the UK the very best in both :-

&

Infact all those extra miles we go, if we added them up we would have gone to the moon and back for all our customers a hundred times over  

Ok enough of that, as you know by now our prices are already astonishingly brilliant but we’ve decided to do something a little bit special for all our regular blog readers and that’s give you a huge Mothers Day special 15% discount off both http://www.InterRose.co.uk and http://www.InterBalloon.com!

 To claim your 15% discount just enter the simple code: “mum” on our order form.

That’s right 15%, I know what you must be thinking… We are one bus stop short on the road to the funny farm to offer such a  blooming great deal as that. And your right… we probably are

So as you can see with tons of balloons and loads of amazing bouquets on offer all at 15% off you don’t actually have an excuse not to get your Mum something amazing this Mothers Day.

Till our next thrilling post.. Cheerio everyone

It’s January the 25th and that can only mean it’s Burns night….

He like us loved his roses and he like us particularly loved red roses,hence his immortalized poem “My Love is like a Red Red Rose” is our most favourite poem.

Infact our love for Robert Burns or as we like top call him Rabbie Burns is so much we have even performed our very own version of “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” and have named a Red Rose and even asked everyone in our 2011 Valentines Day twitter friendly competition why their love is like a red red rose in his honour.

Check all three of our dedications to Robert Burns below :-

 http://www.TRRS.org/rose_garden/the_Robert-Burns-Red-Red_rose.html  

http://blog.TRRS.org/my-love-is-like-a-red-red-rose.html

 http://blog.TRRS.org/twitter-competition

To download our song please right click on this link and save it to your hard drive otherwise just click the play arrow and enjoy our version of “My Love is Like a Red Red Rose” which we are proud to say is unlike any version you will ever hear again!

Happy Burns Night everyone and may your love be like a Red Red Rose forever @->–

To kick start our new and improved rose blog in 2011 the way we mean to go on we firstly need to start with a massive apology to all our red rose blog members for not keeping our rose blog up-to-date. Infact the last blog post we did was to tell you about our Eros Day competwittion winner way back on August the 14th

The reasons are numerous, but boil down to the single thing we lack the most of all and that is time. However we have employed several new staff this year and we are all set for a wonderful 2011 with room to grow our rose business and rose blog into the blooming lovely budding rose it deserves to be!

So with that said… You can’t start a new year off with out a few new years roselutions (Do you like the way we twisted the word resolution and included a rose in it ) so here goes…

• Nurture our Rose Blog
• Grow our Rose Blog
• Water or Rose Blog
• Propagate our Rose Blog
• Bloom our Rose Blog
• Flourish our Rose Blog
• Sow our Rose Blog
• Prune our Rose Blog
• Blossom our Rose Blog

Hope you get the idea It’s all about the Bog and the Roses… Till our next post… keep believing in a thing called Roses everyone!!!

Tracy Jewkes

Her twitter name is @rockystar and we choose her entry above all others because hers explanation was simple yet perfectly formed and she was the only one (except our own entries) to include a smiley face at the end

Trays entry is as follows :-

Love is… All I Need

We know your going to enjoy your lifetime of roses

14th of August 2010 is…

Eros Day

Enter this years Eros Day twitter friendly Love is… competition with or without a twitter account.

Our Eros Day 2010 competition first rocked onto the scene in 2002 and since then we have run a competition every year since including 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. We hope one day in years to come that Eros Day will rival Saint Valentines Day as the most romantic day of the year!

So don’t forget, Fathers Day is on the 20th of June 2010 and if your Dad’s any thing like mine he will love this balloon, if he isn’t into his beer please don’t worry…. we have lots more great designs to choose from at www.InterBalloon.com the UK’s Fathers Day Balloon in a box delivery service of choice!

P.S. Have a great Fathers Day Dad