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.

Sorry we’ve been absent for a while, Christmas was absolutely mental. This post is even a bit late obviously as 2012 is already upon us but, don’t worry because we’ve got a great year in store for our wonderful customers.

Christmas hamper bonanza

Before I bang on about the new year too much we have to take a deep breath and look back at the amazing Christmas we just had. When I say insane I really do mean it. It was like a hurricane of blood-thirsty customers who wouldn’t rest until they’d bought all our mistletoe/holly/hampers!!!

I mean I’m not complaining or anything but seriously we were absolutely swamped. We hope you all had a lovely Christmas of course and enjoyed your goods. We all had a nice one as well except for Sam who’s manic depression got the better of him Only kidding Sam, hormonal imbalances aren’t funny and we shouldn’t laugh about it.

New Year

So here we are, it’s 2012 and the earth hasn’t imploded yet. The Mayans shouldn’t feel too embarrassed though because – although it isn’t for biblical reasons – the world is in a pretty bad state, what with the global economic meltdown and Justin Bieber etc.

New balloon designs incoming
We’ve been giving a lot of love to InterHamper and InterMistletoe  just lately and we feel that InterBalloon could do with a bit of refresh, so we’ve decided to add a tonne of all-new designs from around the globe. There’s some really nice balloons doing the rounds at the moment that we’re eagerly going to be welcoming in to the InterBalloon family.

Valentines day preparation

Dare we even mention it? The biggest day of the year is upon us once more and we’ve got a little bit of preparation planned that’ll hopefully control some of the Valentines Day chaos that’s sure to ensue. We’re probably going to offer a more concise range this Valentines day, not because we’re stingy, but because we want you – our lovely customers – to be able to make the best choice of flowers/roses for your loved ones. Obviously those of you who still want to order your 74 red roses (you know who you are you arbitrary individual) can do so by simply giving us a call and having a chat with one of our awesome staff. We’ll get you sorted in no time, but for most of you; we know you like to keep it simple so we’re going to be making our rose bouquets luxury as standard and really pushing the indisputable king of Valentines Day bouquets: A Dozen Luxury Long-Stemmed Red Roses!

Have a happy new year

All said and done, 2011 was a great year for us and our customers. We updated our sites with some cool new bits and ventured rather successfully into new territories. We even got a smile out of Sam which is quite a feat let me tell you.

All the best,

Ben

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 February the 14th 2011 and there is just enough time to for me to say Happy Valentines Day to ya’all and to thank everyone for entering our wonderful  twitter friendly  Valentines Day competition at http://blog.TRRS.org/twitter-competition.

We will be anouncing the winner in a week or so as soon as we get a few moment to ourselves. 

That said, today of all days is not one of those few moments and I can hear the gentle sobs of our blooming wonderful and hard working staff in the distance as they are handed a whole lot more orders to process!!!

So before I join them with armfuls of more roses we hope whatever your doing today (the most romantic or should that be stressful day of the year) believe in a thing called Love and Romance when your doing it OK!

TTFN… x

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

Here goes… Keep it Sssshhhh!!!… Daffodils are back despite the cold weather!

They really are the perfect Bunch of Mothers Day Flowers and what’s more as a real Mothers day Treat why not add one of our FREE Name a Roses from www.Name-a-Rose.com worth £9.99  to your daffodils.

Don’t forget we also do Sunflowers, Carnations, Lilies, Orchids, Tulips and Freesias if Daffodils are not your Mums favourite flower!

P.S. Hey not allMums want flowers on mothers Day thats for sure so if your Mum is one of them why not check out our range of Mothers Day Balloon in a Box. They all still come with a FREE Name a Rose!

The picture below is a close up of just one of the Luxury Bouquets we sent. This particular one had a rainbow mix of all our roses and oodles of gyp! (Not everyone wants just red roses on Valentines Day you know)

So that’s it for another year (or 6 months if you count http://www.ErosDay.com) and to those who still haven’t sent a rose to their Valentine your  leaving it blooming late but don’t worry you can send one of our FREE virtual roses over at http://www.VirtualRoses.co.uk.

P.S. Did you hear us being interviewed by BBC Radio Suffolk yesterday? A great laugh was had byall! Especially all the staff who crowded around the radio enjoying our brief moment of fame!

P.P.S. Almost forgot to say our Valentines Day twitter friendly http://www.AThingCalledLove.org competwittion is still open and taking entries until midnight tonight!

The snow is melting at last up and down the UK and 2010 feels like it’s just about to begin at last.

So on that note we just want to thank everyone of our past, present and future customers for believing in Us and believing in a thing called Love

Happy New Year y’alland may good luck follow you always.

With love form everyone here at The Red Rose Society!

P.S. Our Valentines Day 2010 Competwittion is avaialble to enter over at www.AThingCalledLove.org and you can see all the fabolous entries as and when they come in over at http://twitter.com/TRRS.