The butterfly touch

`Everyone was moved to tears of joy and spiritually uplifted. It was the most amazing experience." A new birth, perhaps? Or maybe a reunion? No, the event that has moved Dorothy K. of Homewood, Illinois, to such descriptive excesses on the Insect Lore website is none other than the latest wedding phenomenon to hit Europe: the butterfly celebration.

The idea is that at a given time during a special celebration (wedding, christening, Bar Mitzvah, final arrival of the plumber, etc.) each guest is handed a small, beribboned box. On untying the bow, a butterfly will stretch its wings and take to the sky, reducing every one - presumably - to tears of joy.

It could only have originated in the US - and, indeed, Insect Lore the company that dreamed up the butterfly celebration, is based in that Mecca of all things excessive and kitsch, California. However, the butterflies that will be popping out of boxes in Mulhuddart and Madrid will have travelled no further than the European branch in Milton Keynes.

But if the thought of the poor insects flying all the way from England, never mind the task of catching all the things when the cavalcade finally arrives, is too much for you, relax. The whole point about the butterfly celebration is that you grow the butterflies yourself. It's all timed like a military manoeuvre. Exactly one week before your release date, a butterfly kit containing live Painted Lady butterfly chrysalids (the stage after chrysallis) arrives. Then it's up to you to pop one into each of the boxes provided, secure then with little bows, put them into the incubation boxes, and keep them in a room at 74F to 78F. The butterflies will hatch between one and four days before the big day, but there is no need to flit around feeding them little morsels of nettles as they can apparently survive on stored body fats until they are released.

"It's been overwhelmingly successful in the States," says Cindy Ryan, an American who, together with business partner Jennifer White, heads up the Milton Keynes office of Insect Lore. "Over there they send out around 100 kits per week. Weddings are particularly popular, where they are the latest thing to replace confetti, but they also released butterflies when Stephen Spielberg opened a new ride at Universal Studios."

Whether the Irish will be convinced by the idea of living confetti remains to be seen as the concept has only just been launched and as yet no kits have gone out. In the States, some concerns have been raised about the environmental aspects of the butterfly release - could the released butterflies spread diseases to the wild butterfly population, and is it unnecessarily cruel to transport the insects, given that some 10 per cent will not hatch?

"The Painted Lady butterflies that we use are native to Europe and we breed them in the laboratory in England. They're safe in nature. We notify the Ministry of Agriculture whenever we launch a new kit. We like to think that we're giving something back to nature," says Ryan who has been hatching butterflies for educational kits for the last five years .

The more practical drawbacks are two-fold. Given that the weeks prior to any big event and particular those of the marriage variety are full to bursting with preparation, it seems vaguely masochistic to go into the butterfly farming business as well. Apart from the fiddly task of individually incubating each baby butterfly, the anxiety of constant temperature-taking might just be enough to put your marriage on the rocks before it even begins.

The other alarm bell goes off with a line in the brochure: "If there is a chance that you will be releasing the butterflies in inclement weather, at night, out of the country, or if your release day temperature will be below 70 degrees, we cannot guarantee a successful release." So that's Ireland out of the question, then? "We would only really recommend a butterfly release for July or August weddings, given the weather situation," agrees Cindy Ryan. "The butterflies naturally fly towards the light, so if it's raining or very overcast they just stay very still." So while the sight of hundreds of butterflies taking to the sky would doubtless be rather pretty, there is also the rather alarming thought - what to do with 250 sulking butterflies after the big day?

The Butterfly Celebration can be contacted at 0044 1908 200 794 or at www.butterflycelebration.com