Leis

For the most part, flowers should be bright, cheerful and be full of surprises. This may be the only thing the recipient has to see aside from the television, medical equipment and of course the nurse/doctor. Oddly many customers always request fragrant flowers for hospital recipients. I don't know a single person who wants to be immersed in a sweet smelling flower 24 hours a day. Imagine being in a bed and all you get to do is smell a perfumed room that can be nauseating while eating or taking medications. We usually avoid fragrant flowers for this reason and should you receive an overly fragrant arrangement, please be sure to thank the sender that insists that you just love fragrant flowers while in bed. 

Also avoid white flowers as some cultures (Asian) view white flowers as death.  

Also for Japanese culture it is not proper to send a potted plant showing roots (i.e. orchids) to someone recovering from an illness. 

The idea of having one's ashes inside a pu'olo may appear attractive and Hawaiian, but the pu'olo was not intended for housing of ashes prior to scattering. 

The function of the pu'olo is to remove any spiritual connection to what was placed inside it. hat this suggests that a pu'olo will remove all spiritual association to the ashes with in. In other words the ashes are just charred remans without a spiritual connection. 

If you want to place ashes into a container, may I suggest a koa calabash or one made from any of the many hardwoods in Hawai'i. 

A pu'olo is used for enclosing a lei, food preparations or s gift to present to the Gods or high chiefs/queens. 

The basic color for a Chinese funeral is all white.  Sometimes soft chartreuse, cream and medium green shades are acceptable. Often arrangements are tagged by a generation (i.e. children, grandchildren, etc.)  Flowers are best when they are coordinated by color scheme and style.

In the Buddhist sect for any Japanese memorial services, it is deemed poor taste to have any flowers that has or once have had thorns. Flowers, especially roses is considered bad taste. Other thorny flowers include branches that have thorns in them and foliages with thorny appendages on them. Usual colors are white, green and soft colors. 

The universal acceptance color for breast cancer is pink, but it is understood and acknowledged that pink is the universally accepted color for cancer survivors.  We alsosuggest that you suspend the idea of sending something fragrant if the recipient has just gone through chemo or from heavy medications. For something long lasting, may we suggest a pink flowerring orchid plant. 

Flowers are meant to natures accent to any occasion, but unfortunately there are human intervention that may not always be well intended, but there are "old wive's taled" of a lei worn around the neck of a pregnant mother may cause strangulation of her child. Unlike a chain thst she wears has no issues for strangulation even though metal is stronger than flowers. Yet customarily it is deemed of poor taste to allow a pregnant  mother to wear a neck lei. Often if a lei is desired, we suggest an "open" untied lei or a head lei (tied together)