Blooming Wallets: How Money Bouquets Became the World's Most Lavish Gift Trend
From Lagos to Los Angeles, folded bills and crisp banknotes are replacing roses as the ultimate symbol of celebration — and a booming cottage industry is cashing in.
Neema Wanjiru remembers the exact moment she knew she had stumbled onto something big. It was the summer of 2022, and she had spent three hours in her Nairobi apartment carefully folding Kenyan shillings into origami roses, then wiring them through green floral stems and fanning them out in a glass vase alongside a ribbon bow of gold. She posted a photo to her Instagram page on a whim. By morning, she had 400 messages in her inbox.
"People were asking, 'Where can I buy this? Can you make one for my mother's birthday? My boyfriend's graduation?'" Wanjiru recalls, laughing. "I had to tell them I didn't even have a business yet."
She does now. Her shop, Pesa Petals — pesa meaning "money" in Swahili — ships money bouquets across Kenya and to the Kenyan diaspora in the United Kingdom and Canada. She employs four part-time designers, all women from her neighborhood, and regularly fills orders worth the equivalent of several hundred dollars.
Wanjiru is far from alone. Across the world, in cultures as varied as Nigerian Yoruba communities, Korean households preparing for dol birthday celebrations, and Latinx families marking quinceañeras, the money bouquet has quietly exploded into one of the most viral gifting trends of the 2020s. What was once a niche folk craft — bills folded into flowers and tucked into envelopes at weddings — has become a full-blown industry, complete with professional designers, luxury packaging, bespoke commissions, and a thriving ecosystem of tutorials, supply stores, and social media influencers.
A Gift as Old as Money Itself
The roots of giving currency as a gift are ancient. In China, red envelopes stuffed with cash — hóngbāo — have been exchanged during Lunar New Year and weddings for more than a thousand years. In Nigeria, "spraying" money on a person of honor at a celebration has long been a communal act of joy and affirmation. In Germany, it is practically a tradition to give a Geldgeschenk (money gift) artfully arranged on a wooden board or in a creative display for graduations and birthdays, because Germans — known for their practical sensibilities — tend to view straight cash as the most honest gift of all.
What changed in the 2020s was the presentation. Somewhere in the overlapping currents of TikTok virality, pandemic-era entrepreneurialism, and a broader cultural embrace of handcrafting, the act of wrapping and folding cash into decorative arrangements achieved a kind of critical mass. Suddenly, gifting money didn't have to feel impersonal. It could be spectacular.
"The bouquet solves the oldest problem with giving cash," says Dr. Amelia Osei, a consumer behavior researcher at the University of Ghana. "Giving someone a stack of bills can feel cold or transactional. But when you fold those same bills into flowers, wrap them in cellophane, tie them with a bow, and hand them over — that's an event. There's effort. There's artistry. The emotional weight of the gift is completely transformed."
The TikTok Effect
Credit for the global explosion of money bouquets belongs, in no small part, to the short-video revolution. Creators on TikTok and Instagram Reels discovered early that the visual drama of unboxing a bouquet — peeling back the cellophane to reveal roses made of rolled twenties, or a sunflower arrangement of crisp hundred-dollar bills — was irresistible content. The process videos were even better: the methodical folding, the satisfying snap of a rubber band around a bill, the slow zoom on a finished product.
Videos tagged #moneybouquet have collectively accumulated billions of views across platforms. Creators in the United States, the UK, Brazil, South Africa, and the Philippines all developed their own regional styles, often incorporating local currency, national colors, and cultural symbols.
In the United States, the trend gained particular traction around prom season, graduations, and milestone birthdays. American creators often favor large-denomination bills fanned dramatically outward, mixed with real or artificial flowers, and sometimes incorporating gift cards. In the Philippines, money bouquets became popular for debuts — the traditional 18th birthday celebration — with peso notes woven into intricate floral arrangements that can take a designer upwards of six hours to complete.
"I've had clients cry when they received one," says Manila-based designer Corazon Delos Santos, who runs her business, Petalang Piso, out of her home in Quezon City. "It's not just the money. It's knowing someone sat down and made something for you."
The Craft Goes Upmarket
What began as a kitchen-table cottage industry has matured, in some markets, into genuine luxury. In Dubai and across the Gulf states, where ostentatious gift-giving is cultural currency of its own, money bouquet designers are offering arrangements featuring UAE dirhams, Saudi riyals, and even foreign currencies of the recipient's home country — all nestled in hand-painted vases, custom laser-cut boxes, and surrounded by real preserved roses. Some commissions run into the thousands of dollars.
London's West African community — centered in areas like Peckham and Brixton — has developed a particularly vibrant money bouquet culture tied to parties, naming ceremonies, and Nigerian-style owambe celebrations. Designers here often incorporate both British pounds and Nigerian naira to honor a client's dual identity.
"That dual-currency element is very meaningful for diaspora communities," says Wanjiru. "It says: I see where you came from, and I see where you are now."
At the higher end of the market, designers have begun sourcing rare or uncirculated banknotes — pristine, unfolded bills in sequential serial numbers — to give bouquets an added premium feel. Some creators laminate finished floral arrangements in resin, preserving them as permanent art objects. Others have begun experimenting with cryptocurrency: physical "crypto coins," laser-etched with wallet addresses, have appeared in boutique bouquets in tech-forward cities like Singapore and Seoul.
Cultural Nuances and the Question of Respect
Not every culture has embraced the trend without complication. In Japan, where gift-giving protocol is governed by elaborate social convention, attitudes toward money bouquets have been mixed. Traditionally, cash gifts in Japan are presented in noshikibukuro — special envelopes with prescribed folding and presentation customs depending on the occasion. Some Japanese etiquette experts have raised eyebrows at the Western-influenced money bouquet, viewing the act of folding currency into flowers as potentially disrespectful to the currency itself, which in Japanese custom should be presented flat and crisp.
Similarly, in India, where currency is sometimes imbued with religious significance and the defacement of banknotes is technically prohibited, money bouquets occupy a gray area. Creators there have navigated this by using replica or decorative "fantasy" notes — printed gift notes in the style of currency — alongside real cash kept in accompanying envelopes.
"There are real cultural sensitivities," acknowledges Dr. Osei. "The same object can mean generosity in one context and disrespect in another. The best designers are the ones who understand those distinctions."
In contrast, Latin American countries — particularly Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela — have taken to money bouquets with enormous enthusiasm. In Mexico, they've become a staple of XV años celebrations, where the guest of honor is presented with a towering centerpiece of colorful bills, sparklers, and artificial florals. In Colombia, creative variations using the brightly colored Colombian peso notes — some of the most visually striking banknotes in the world — have made for particularly photogenic arrangements.
The Entrepreneurs Behind the Blooms
Across this global trend, one throughline is consistent: the creators are overwhelmingly women, many of them operating informal micro-businesses that have grown organically through word of mouth and social media.
In Lagos, twenty-six-year-old Tomisin Adeyemi started making money bouquets during the COVID-19 lockdowns when her event-planning job evaporated. "I had time, I had creativity, and I needed income," she says simply. Today her business, Owo Roses (owo meaning "money" in Yoruba), employs three assistants and has a six-week waiting list for major celebration orders.
In Chicago, Latina entrepreneur Guadalupe Reyes turned a viral TikTok of a quinceañera money bouquet she made for her cousin into a business that now ships nationally. She estimates she made more in her first year of money bouquets than in any previous year of her working life.
The economics, for a skilled designer, can be compelling. A basic money bouquet — say, $200 in bills fashioned into an arrangement — might retail for $240 to $280, with the premium covering labor and materials. A complex luxury arrangement with $500 in premium bills, real florals, a custom box, and personalized ribbons might carry a $180 to $250 service fee on top. Repeat customers and referrals can generate a steady, reliable income stream.
"People think you're just folding money," says Delos Santos in Manila. "But there's real skill in this. I've studied origami. I understand color theory. I know how to make something that photographs beautifully and also holds together when someone picks it up. That knowledge has value."
Where the Trend Is Headed
Industry observers and creators alike believe the money bouquet trend is far from peaking. As more people around the world become aware of the concept, demand continues to expand into new markets. A growing number of professional gift designers are now offering online courses and kits — shrink wrap, floral wire, foam bases, decorative stems — enabling a new generation of home crafters to try their hand.
Some entrepreneurs are beginning to explore franchising models. Others are looking at corporate gifting, with money bouquets customized with company branding as employee rewards or client gifts.
The social media ecosystem continues to drive discovery. Each new viral video in a new country seeds fresh demand: a popular creator in Indonesia showing off a rupiah bouquet, a South Korean designer posting an arrangement of crisp won notes for a grandparent's hwangap (60th birthday), a Brazilian family presenting a real intricately folded arrangement of reais at a chá de bebê (baby shower) — every post is an advertisement that speaks for itself.
"Money is universal," says Wanjiru, arranging a new order at her worktable, her fingers moving with practiced precision around a stack of five-hundred-shilling notes. "Everyone understands it. And everyone understands a flower. When you put them together, you don't need a translator."
She sets the finished bloom in its vase, adjusts the ribbon, and holds it up to the light — a small, gleaming artifact of a gifting revolution still very much in full flower.
