Doctor takes wedding flowers and turns them into bouquets for her patients

A wedding bouquet.
(Image credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Couples can spend thousands of dollars on flowers for their weddings, without knowing what to do with them when the big day is over. Eleanor Love has a solution: Give them to her and let her team turn the stems into brand new bouquets for patients at Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center.

While attending Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, Love, 27, wanted to lift the spirits of severely ill patients. Before starting medical school, Love worked at a florist, and she knew studies have shown flowers and plants in hospital rooms help patients heal. Love told The Washington Post she decided to start calling wedding coordinators, to see if the brides and grooms they were working with would be willing to give her their flowers once their ceremonies and receptions were over, for her to repurpose into bouquets for patients.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.