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Part 2! Flower Processing and Arranging, we will cover everything from the time we order the flowers to the time we show up on your wedding day. For this part, we will follow along with a wedding we did this past May. This mid-May wedding was filled with beautiful peonies, garden roses, and antique hydrangeas.
30 Days Prior to the Wedding: Today’s the day! You sent in your final payment, you've confirmed centerpieces and any other small last-minute changes that may have needed to be done. It's crunch time for me! I start confirming my “recipes”, counting all my stems and turning those numbers into bunches. A sample recipe would look something like this:
Once I have all my stems counted I add a 10% extra buffer for breakage or blooms that don’t open up so nice. I gather all my stem counts, convert them to bunches and place my pre-order with my wholesaler. I am one of the few lucky florists that have such a wonderful wholesaler so close by. If your bouquet requires a more specialty flower that is only available in-season, I typically source them from either my personal garden or from a local flower farm. Some of my favorite flowers to source locally are tulips, peonies, lilacs, and sweet peas. 4-2 Days Prior to the Wedding: It’s the week of your wedding and you’re probably taking your first day off from work in preparation for the big day! This is when our true hard work starts! Depending on the type of flower, the season and your wedding date we typically pick up our flower order between 4-2 days before your wedding. This allows the flowers to open and hydrate in preparation for the wedding day. Upon pickup, the flowers will be wrapped tightly in bunches of 5, 10, 12 or 25 and often the greenery will be in boxes. Once we load up, we head home and the madness begins. We have to open each package, strip each stem of excess greenery, remove the thorns from each rose, give each stem a fresh cut and place them in freshwater with flower food. Some flowers like hydrangea require an extra step when they must be cut, dripped in Alum (yes, the pickling spice) and then put into freshwater with flower food. We also like to take extra care with our hydrangeas and mist them once or twice per day. Hydrangeas are thirsty flowers and can drink from both their stems and petals. Some other flowers/foliages that can have extra steps are dahlias, anthurium, dusty miller and more. They are given a fresh cut and set in almost boiling water. The extremely hot water helps the flower drink and keeps them hydrated longer. Caution, not all flowers are accepting of this trick so make sure to do your research before you try to process all flowers this way. Processing the flowers usually takes us between 3-5 hours per wedding and once we are done processing we have all those lovely leaves and stem tips to clean up. Flowers are then placed in 1 of 3 locations depending on their particular needs. We either place them out in room temperature air, cooled air in our cool room or directly in the cooler if they are extra delicate. 1-2 Days Prior to the Wedding: Now, this is when all the fun starts! We get to start arranging and playing with the flowers to create the bouquets, centerpieces and other arrangements. We always start with the bridal bouquet. We handpick the biggest, the fluffiest, the most luxurious blooms for the bridal bouquet. After all, it is her special day. We separate each bouquet’s recipe in their vase and then we play. Typically, we start each bouquet with a bed of greenery. The greenery is there to help support the more fragile flowers and create a grid to hold the other stems in place. A bouquet can be done without any greenery of all of course. For those, we typically do the “French-Twist” or “European style” hand-tied bouquet. The French Twist may sound tricky but it is one of the easier and more time-efficient methods. Plus we love the beautiful spiral the stems create when you are finished. A true test of the French Twist is to see if the bouquet stands on its own. If properly spiraled and cut, the bouquet should be able to balance on the stems and stand on level ground on its own. Once we have the bouquet all set we do a preliminary wrap in bind wire or bouquet tape to hold the stems in place. We give them all a fresh cut and place the bouquet back into freshwater. Similar to the bouquets, we collect each ingredient for the centerpiece recipe and place them in their holders. We then decide on our mechanics. Are we going to need floral foam, chicken wire, a floral frog or really anything at all? Our favorite mechanics to use are chicken wire and the floral fog. They are both made from metal and completely reusable. We find that to be a more environmentally friendly approach than floral foam. Once assembled the centerpieces are placed back into the cool room and there they wait till the wedding day. The Evening Before the Wedding: It’s now crunch time for us and now is when we start some of the finishing touches. We wrap the bouquets with their ribbon, we shine the vases and create our plan of attack for the next day. We now try and devise a plan for travel. How will all of these fit in the car? Will we need a second car or a truck, maybe a truck and a trailer? Yes, one of our December weddings will require us to have a full truck and trailer as we will need to cut six fresh balsam fir Christmas trees for the wedding. We will prep the boutonnieres and wrap them with their twine or ribbon and prep the flowers for the corsages. We typically like to make the flowers that will be out of water on the day of the wedding last, so they are incredibly fresh and last throughout the evening. We’re typically up till 11 pm or midnight the day before and then back up at 5 am the morning of the wedding. We’re perfectionists ourselves so we want to make sure we have enough time to make sure everything is absolutely perfect come wedding day. Check out our last installment of the #BehindtheScenes blog coming soon. We will explore the wedding day and share our secrets on how we pull it all off as husband and wife team.
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Day 0: The First Contact
Yeahhh! You’re engaged and so excited to plan your upcoming wedding. You’ve picked your date, your venue and (hopefully) your wedding attendants. You are now on the hunt for a florist! You come across our wedding wire page and find our incredible reviews and see real photos of our work. You click that “Request Pricing” button and it all starts now. We receive your message and we’re off to the races. We try to respond within an hour or two of all inquiries. Typically, we ask that you fill out our wedding flower questionnaire on our website to give us some more details about your special day. Day 2: The Consultation Once we receive your wedding flower questionnaire, we will contact you via email unless otherwise stated to set up a complimentary consultation. Our consultations can be so many ways! Most brides opt for an email or phone consultation. However, we can do in-person consultations at either our home studio or coffee shop of your choice! If you are planning a large wedding with hanging installations or intricate installations, we often will opt for an in-person consultation at your venue. Consultations usually last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour depending on the wedding size and the types of florals needed. During your consultation, you should be prepared to be asked the “tough question”, what’s your budget. It may seem like a very daunting task and you may not even know where to start but we’re here to help! The first thing we will tell you is to be 100% honest with yourself and us. We know not everyone has an unlimited flower budget. In fact, we find most couples typically spend 15% of their wedding budget on flowers. To put that into perspective, our small/intimate wedding flower quotes on average come in around $750.00 - $1500.00 and full production/large wedding quotes come in around $2,500.00 -$5,500.00. This, of course, depends on so many factors including guest count, seasonality, and style. One thing to note is that since we are a studio florist that caters to weddings and special events only, we do have a $500 minimum spend. All flowers and greenery are specially ordered fresh for you and your wedding only. Some other fun questions we will go over is your style. Do you like more flowers or more greenery? (And yes we know you’ve heard the more greenery the cheaper. More to come on dispelling that myth in a later blog!) We will ask you if you have a Pinterest board you can share with us or some example photos? We will go over different types of flowers and why you may or may not want them. Side note, carnations are coming back strong and we’re here for it! They don’t make them like they did in the 80s. Once we hang up we will immediately begin working on a mood board for you. Day 3: The Mood Board The fun part! This is where all your ideas and dreams semi come to life! We create a specifically curated mood board for you. Your mood board will include multiple images per bouquet, boutonniere, centerpiece and the list goes on. This is done to help you get a feel of what size, texture, shape, and color palette your arrangements will have. While the photos won’t be spot on they should be fairly close in a few aspects. At the end of each mood board, we have a full flower recipe. This recipe will show you real photos of the flowers that we intend to use in your arrangements. Along with the mood board, we will also include a quote for you. This quote will be written to explain whether the order is for pick up or delivery and if it will explain if any rental items are used. Now is the time to be picky! It’s not often we encourage it but if there was a time it’s now. Let us know if you were envisioning a more blush pink or a brighter pink. Maybe you want to swap out some standard roses for some beautiful garden roses. We’re here to help and want to make sure everything is 100% to your liking. We’re perfectionists ourselves so we understand. Day 5: The Formal Proposal Here’s where things get serious. You’ve carefully reviewed your mood board and quote and you are happy with your final draft. You’re ready to take the next step and lock us in! Once you give us the green light we will write up a formal contract for your review. We have recently upgraded to some new software which will allow you to sign the contract right there online and even place your deposit with us at the same time. 45 Days Prior to the Wedding: Great now you’re locked in with us and have secured your date! Now what? Well, to be honest not much. Well, at least not for a while anyway. We will follow up with you 45 days before the wedding. At this time we will check in to verify centerpiece counts and pick up / delivery & set-up times. We will send you over an invoice for your final payment that is due 30 days prior to the wedding. Once we receive your final payment your flowers are ordered and we start prepping vases, ribbons and anything else that needs our attention. 7 Days Prior to the Wedding: Whoot Whoot! Your wedding day is almost here! We will once again check in with you to confirm our arrival time to your venue and map out our game plan if necessary. We will also be checking the weather and ask you about a rain(or snow) plan. This will be our last contact until the wedding day. We will show up promptly and make contact with your wedding planner or day of contact. Of course, we would love handing over the bridal bouquet to the bride herself but we know she’s a little busy that day. All consultations and booking processes might be slightly different to suit each wedding couple but here’s a taste of what to expect when you contact us. We will have another part of this series coming out soon! Be sure to check back for part 2: Processing and Designing with Flowers and part 3: The Wedding Day. |
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