"We were shocked to see they were poisonous," bride-to-be Madison Mcglinn tells PEOPLE
Credit: Courtesy of Madison Mcglinn (2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Chloe Doven picked angel’s trumpet flowers for her friend, Madison Mcglinn, because they’re her “dream wedding flowers”
- A few days later, TikTok users warned the women that the plant is toxic to humans and animals
- Ingesting the leaves, flowers, or seeds of the plant can lead to severe poisoning, or in some cases, death
A bride-to-be confessed online, "I nearly poisoned my fiancé, my best friend and all my guests at my wedding."
When bride-to-be Madison Mcglinn and her best friend and bridesmaid, Chloe Doven, were in Sydney, Australia, the two came across a tree full of Mcglinn's "dream wedding flowers." Doven decided to climb on top of a car so that she could pick a bundle of the downward-hanging trumpet-shaped blooms for Mcglinn, who later posted a video about it on TikTok. The clip went viral with 7.1 million views and 1.1 million likes — but not for the right reasons. The comments section was flooded with hundreds of warnings that the flowers are "extremely, extremely toxic."
"Aren’t those flowers really dangerous???" one person commented, with someone else writing, "Aren’t they super poisonous flowers? 😳."
@madisonmcglinn So sad I can’t have these flowers at my wedding 💔 ILY @Chloe Doven #2026bride
♬ bujana_a cover – ℳ
"We were shocked to see they were poisonous," Mcglinn, 26, tells PEOPLE. She noted in another post that her "smile faded very quickly" when she read her nearly 2,000 comments.
The fragrant flowers appear to be Brugmansia, which is commonly confused with Datura. Also known as angel's trumpet, the night-blooming perennials contain anticholinergic compounds atropine, scopolamine and hyoscyamine, which results in the leaves, flowers and seeds being toxic to humans and animals when consumed, according to Healthline. Ingestion may cause symptoms like nausea, hallucinations and blurred vision. Ingesting as few as 10 flowers can result in death from toxicity, according to a 2014 study in the National Library of Medicine.
In a follow-up video on TikTok, Mcglinn joked about the "close call" of nearly poisoning her future wedding guests, but relieved everyone by saying that she and Doven are "fine." She tells PEOPLE that despite all of the concerning comments, the pair weren't "too worried" because they didn't ingest the plant. Four days had passed since they picked the flowers, and they had "no reactions at all."
Mcglinn clarified that she wasn't actually going to use Brugmansia as her wedding flowers because her florist advised her not to — not because they pose a safety risk, but because the delicate blooms "don't last long." Florists usually substitute the delicate plant with other flowers that look similar but are nontoxic and long-lasting.
"I was always going to use oriental lilies but I just love the look of these," Mcglinn says. "But open to recommendations, of course, to other options."
Credit: Courtesy of Madison Mcglinn
She wrote in a photo slideshow for people to take this as a "sign to google flowers before randomly picking them 😳."
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Mcglinn will tie the knot on Sept. 14, in Tuscany, Italy.
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