My Summer Wedding Scent

Today’s post is a combination between a wedding and beauty post. I wanted to do a review and share with you the perfume I’ve chosen to wear for my wedding in June! I’m not the type of gal who has a ‘signature scent’, so I didn’t have a go-to fragrance that I immediately thought of wearing for the day.

I bought Jo Malone’s Nectarine Blossom and Honey cologne at a Nordstrom during a trip to San Diego with my fiancé in 2013, back before we had a Nordstrom in the city. I’ve been wearing this perfume for special events (parties, birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, etc.) ever since. It’s a scent I save for “happy moments”, and I was wearing it when we got engaged in Hawaii, so I thought it would be fitting to wear this fragrance on our wedding day.

While Jo Malone has perfumes that are quite interesting (Wood Sage and Sea Salt, anyone?), the scents themselves are very simple. I don’t have the nose of a perfume aficionado, but to me, her scents are quite singular and seem to focus clearly on one note, whereas perfumes from other brands may have more depth. After I purchased Nectarine Blossom and Honey, I learned that the brand’s perfumes are meant to be layered to make your own custom scent. Is this a marketing strategy to get you to buy more (expensive) perfumes? I don’t know, maybe. But I like the idea – this gave me the option of being able to wear Nectarine Blossom and Honey, but with an added twist that would remind me specifically of our wedding day after the fact.

In terms of price, Jo Malone scents are definitely on the pricier side. I spent ~$70 CAD for 30mL on the first bottle I bought back in 2013, but this second time around, it cost me $85 for the same size. This works out to about $2.83 per mL. The small size of this will be good for keeping one of the two scents in my emergency bag for the day if I need a spritz halfway through the day.

To give you some background on the Nectarine Blossom and Honey perfume, the Jo Malone website describes this scent as follows:

“London’s Covent Garden early morning market. Succulent nectarine, peach and cassis and delicate spring flowers melt into the note of acacia honey. Sweet and delightfully playful.” The words I would use to describe this scent are: fruity, sweet, light, clean, and fresh. The nectarine and peach notes are very STRONG, so this perfume is not for those that dislike fruity scents. I find it’s a bit of a cool scent when I first spray it on, but it definitely dries to a warm scent as it warms on your skin.

Top notes: Green notes, blackcurrant, petitgrain
Middle Notes: Nectarine, black locust
Base: Peach, plum, vetiver

This fragrance is quite long-lasting on me; on Valentine’s Day, I put it on in the morning, and I could still smell it on myself when I went to bed that night. However, the sillage isn’t great, at least not for me – I’m not sure if other people can even smell it on me. I have this problem with all fragrances, so I’m not sure if Jo Malone is entirely to blame. However, it seems that a large majority of people voted that this perfume has low sillage on Fragrantica, so it seems that I’m not the only one.

Now onto my experience finding the layering scent I wanted to use with Nectarine Blossom and Honey! Back in November, Nordstrom had a 2x the points event, so I took that opportunity to buy the second scent. The SA helping me was very helpful, because I had no idea which perfume to go for. Since Nectarine Blossom and Honey is a fruity scent, he recommended that I go with a woody scent to balance it out. I tried a bunch of his recommendations on top of it but nothing jumped out at me, which was likely because I am not a big fan of woody/musky scents.

After literally smelling every single perfume they had, I decided to go with Wild Bluebell. This is another fragrance that is along the same vein as Nectarine Blossom and Honey in terms of being very clean and fresh, but it’s considered a “Light Floral” and I think it tones down the fruitiness of the Nectarine Blossom and Honey and balances well with it.

Wild Bluebell is described as “Vibrant sapphire blooms in a shaded woodland. The delicate sweetness of dewy bluebells suffused with lily of the valley and eglantine, and a luscious twist of persimmon.” I would describe this scent with the words: Fresh, clean, cool, watery. Even though this is part of Jo Malone’s “Light Floral” range, it’s not particularly floral. A lot of reviewers on Fragrantica say that this reminds them of the smell of a watermelon rind, which after reading this, I went back to smell it and they are SO right. It’s not sweet or fruity as the actual meat of the watermelon, but the watery smell of the rind. It might sound gross and weird, but it’s very fresh.

Top notes: bluebell and cloves
Middle notes: lily-of-the-valley, jasmine, rose hip
Base: white amber and musk

Combined, the scents make a really nice combination of fruity & floral, with a balance between warm and cool, while still keeping a very fresh smell. It’s definitely something that I would never own from any other brand otherwise. I think this scent is really “me”, and am rather excited to wear this on our wedding day!