love your wedding florist
Our special series of “loving your wedding vendors” continues: Today we are going to talk about your wedding florist.
If you have every tried to do your own DIY flower arrangement, you will know why you should love your wedding florist. It’s more than just having a green thumb, they have to be creative and have serious skills to create dazzling floral works of art! Let’s face it; it’s more than collecting a bunch of flowers, putting floral tape around it and a ribbon!
Reasons why you should love your wedding florist?
- They’ll let you know what flowers are in season so you can save a buck.
- They can take a $450 bridal bouquet picture that you ripped out of In Style Weddings and recreate it without the impact on your pocketbook.
- They make it their business to know a zillion kinds of flowers; all filed and stored in their heads!
- Florists are like MacGyver with interesting and creative ways to create an awesome visual!
- Great florists are willing to: make a prototype before the wedding, make minor adjustments to your bouquet and will throw in an extra boutonnière or corsage (for breakage or oops-you-forgot someone important).
- While this is a creative job it is also incredibly physically demanding. They have to stand for hours in a chilly warehouse so you can have your dream wedding.
- They work under tense deadlines and tremendous pressure to cater to emotional clients.
- Snow, rain, humidity, oppressive heat or cold…they work hard to setup/tear down your décor whether it is inside or outside!
Behind the scenes:
I have so many behind the scenes stories regarding florists…that this could be a long post. So instead I’ve decided to tell you a story about how this whole “love your wedding series” was born.
During my trip to
On Friday, we worked production in a cold, large warehouse to create the centerpieces. Can I just tell you that I would personally want to manage 10 crazy, emotional brides than work in a warehouse? But that’s just me.
Look at the money flowers in this warehouse!
On Saturday we showed up at the gorgeous downtown Hilton to assist with installation for a large Indian wedding reception. This was actually their second wedding reception, to honor the groom’s family in
The bride loved red roses and there were at least 45 centerpieces with about 50-75 roses in each one (there were two sizes). When her New York wedding planner saw the rose centerpieces we had made the previous day, he simply shook his head and said, “No! The bride is not going to like them…she wants the roses tighter together with minimal spacing or greenery”. Oooookay…no problem.
These were the centerpieces before we did the redesign.
AFTER the redesign, nice and compact.
So in the outside veranda at this beautiful and expensive hotel we laid down plastic sheets and reworked the design in every single centerpiece. I pulled out and cut over 2,500 roses while Sally would create arrangements. It took us four continuous hours with one break. We were very methodical at first but towards the end we had to really push ourselves so we could clean up before guests showed up! Literally we were rolling the carts out to the service elevator while guests were starting to come up the stairs. Whew.
Those suckers were heavy!
Pretty room! and the centerpieces did look better the way the bride wanted them.
The bride and groom never knew how hard we worked. And for the record; I no longer like red roses.
For the florists that deliver exceptional service and let their brides see their wedding bouquet and floral arrangement before the wedding, like we do, for that … you should love them!
Question: what do florists get on Valentine’s Day? teehee.
Plan on! -saundra
Tomorrow: love your wedding videographer!
for the record….. we want xanax wrapped in a chocolate box for valentines day!!!! lol……..
you might also add the COUNTLESS hours that go into the ordering properly for wedding flowers. One point that is NEVER covered in a wedding magazine. Those beautiful peonies are grown in different parts of the world thru out the year, and getting them shipped in can be challenging. SOOO, unlike the flowers you get at Sams or you order on line, a local florist will prep cut and stand behind their flowers! Would you like me to go on???? One more small point…. why does a rose cost so much? We cut them, prep them in preservative, put them in our coolers in buckets, utilize tools, wire, tape, ribbons & pins to build a bouquet….. so basically, the pricing comes from the care, handling and design. Am I on a tangent or what
THANK you for that fabulous post. I don’t think most brides “get it” for their wedding. AWESOME!
Saundra, experiences like this are part of why I have advocated that wedding vendors stage with other vendors to see just what they go through.
I am working on one this month that has 3′ tall glass cylinders as centerpieces. Since they each have only a few orchids the bride and planner could not understand why they were so expensive. UH, because each cylinder has to have about 5-6 gallons of water hauled to it and then empties at the end of the event. For 34 tables that is a heck of a lot of water.
I am so loving this post! It’s true, half the stress and effort goes into ordering the exact flowers the bride wants, and praying that when I go to pick them up, they will actually be there (and in good condition, too!) It’s a really really tough job, but filled with so much joy that it makes it all worth it. Thank you for this post! I feel like forwarding it to everyone I know
Thank you for visiting!! Go ahead…forward it…would love to hear from other florists!!!