When your venue is selected and you’ve said yes to your dress, it’s time to start thinking about how you want to smell on your big day. Choosing your wedding day scents can be a statement, a guaranteed memory and a chance to set the mood for yourself with the perfect accent that embodies your theme and your romance.
But what to choose?
We asked the perfumers and fragrance houses to dive deep into their catalogues to bring us their favorite and most popular scents for weddings. Explore the sensual notes and invigorating bouquets that the experts love for walking down the aisle, and you just might discover your perfect wedding-day scent.
Choosing Wedding-Day Scents
It’s important to understand what kind of mood you’re looking to embody for your wedding day, and to take into account that this fragrance will have a strong nostalgia for your special day, explains Bulgari’s global creative director, Amandine Pallez.
“A wedding day is, hopefully, THE one day of your life you should remember forever,” Pallez says. “I recommend your fragrance to also be special, elegant, and sophisticated yet traditional and discreet for an afternoon celebration.“
Bulgari also offers bespoke enhanced scents and personalize further with Bulgari’s Magnifying Essences, a companion to their beloved Allegra Collection that can be used with any fragrance to create a custom fragrance that is truly yours.
According to CEO of Parfums Henry Jacques, Anne-Lise Cremona, rose is among the most popular of wedding day scents. “To my knowledge, the most commonly used fragrance notes for weddings are white flowers and roses,” Cremona says. “The most popular perfumes are usually very light, floral scents, to represent a tender and sacred moment that also corresponds to a highly elaborate decor. These fragrance notes are also often found in bridal bouquets, with soft and pastel colors.”
But that might not appeal to every bride’s vision for her big day.
“The question I ask myself is: Is this really a must?” Cremona questions. “To me, there’s a difference between what’s popular and what truly represents the personalities of the bride and groom. A bespoke perfume created for this important occasion should not represent an event but rather the deeper personalities of the couple.”
The Scents That Move You
For some fragrance houses, perfume is a method through which memories can be evoked. And your wedding day may be the perfect opportunity to delve into some of those childhood, nostalgic scents that make you feel like the most beautiful version of yourself.
“Our first olfactory memories must be of our mothers,” explains Memo Paris found Clara Molloy. “Feeling at home. Feeling safe. Olfaction is such a primal sense. It’s like a time machine, it can take you anywhere, with anyone. Having grown up in Paris, I remember the streets of the City of Light in the rain, with their wet, porous stones, while John was brought up in the Irish countryside, with horses around him. All this baggage has given us our olfactory palette, but we’re both interested in discovering new scents, being surprised, and developing our olfactory imagination.”
If the scent of honeysuckle takes you back home, if tobacco musk reminds you of your soulmate or if vetiver reminds you of your first hike together, that might be exactly what you need to anchor your wedding day fragrance.
“As you prepare for one of the most special days of your life, it’s the little details that make your wedding day unforgettable!” Pallez explains. “With scent evoking so much nostalgia, one detail that will forever bring you back to that day is the fragrance you choose to wear—an invisible accessory leaving a lasting impression.”
The Bride
We all know a wedding day doesn’t happen overnight. There’s a lot of planning and prep that goes into the big day, and brides can end up feeling more anxious than excited. And that’s not to mention all the expectations placed on new brides to make everyone happy across the aisles.
Having a fragrance that’s undeniably your choice can help ground you in the moment.
“Ideally, the bride should feel completely aligned with herself,” Cremona says. “Nevertheless, in reality, the moment often no longer feels entirely hers, and she may easily find herself playing a role that doesn’t fundamentally resonate with her true personality. Perfume holds precisely this power—it is a comforting presence. In such a moment, it instills confidence, security, and reminds us of who we are, allowing us to intimately affirm our identity, which often eludes us on a day shared with so many other people.”
At Bulgari, bridal scents range from the soft and sweet to the more musky and complex.
“I would recommend Allegra Fiori d’Amore,” Pallez says. “Which is a modern and elegant scent of Rose, captures the passionate energy of Italian love. Delicate and unbridled, tasteful and intense!”
You can also check out the wedding day scents NewBeauty editors chose for their big day here.
Popular Wedding-Day Scents for the Bride
Wedding Day Scents for the Groom
“Softer, floral notes are best for the groom on his wedding day,” says CEO of St. Johns Fragrance, Rhys Moore. “Ideally you want scents that the bride will find pleasing and romantic. My recommendation is a fragrance with heart notes of rose or vanilla blossom or lavender—soft, sophisticated but not feminine.”
If you’re drawn to something off the beaten path, say Memo Paris’ Irish Leather, you might lend a complex and green-smelling freshness that marries (get it?) perfectly with the more light and floral smells of a wedding. Molloy recommends taking time to discover fragrances with depth that will carry you through best day of your life.
“A Memo Paris fragrance is like an olfactory landscape that you never forget: the more you explore it, the more you discover new elements that lead to the complete picture, the more they reveal themselves, moving you in return,” Molloy explains. “It is also why the idea of a journey, of the experience of the body in motion, connected to its senses, is so inspiring to us and guides us in our approach to perfume.”
“My recommendation for a groom is Vetiver,” Moore says. “This is our most sophisticated cologne and very female friendly. It has a slight citrus top note, and the heart notes are Lily of the Valley, Magnolia, and Rose – perfect for the bride to smell when in a close embrace with the groom.”
And going with floral wedding day scents doesn’t have to mean giving up masculinity.
Popular Wedding-Day Scents for the Groom
