It's always an honour to be asked to design someone’s wedding flowers or in fact to be asked to create flowers for anyone; for special occasions or just to sit in their home to be enjoyed for a week or so. This is how I've been brought up in floristry, customers have a choice and they may choose someone else to arrange their flowers.
When I'm planning weddings I'm always respectful of favourite flowers, particular colour combinations and design choices, even if they aren’t mine. Over the years I’ve learned that no matter how weird, strange, downright boring or utterly outrageous some clients preferences are, I need to listen, and sometimes I agree absolutely with them, because experience tells me when push comes to shove these favourite flowers etc. Fit them and their day.
I want you to know however I don’t go down without a fight, I tempt them with delicious alternatives, after all they just might not know what is available, I show them some inspired creations and nine times out of ten clients are grateful, glad of my in-put and are delighted with our final selections, sometimes we compromise and very occasionally I just can’t get on the same page as them.
When the latter happens I am always gutted, devastated and quite often beside myself, because I really do care. I care about our clients, our team, our suppliers and our reputation.
A friend of ours is a “business moghul”, he wheels and deals, is massively successful and makes huge amounts of wonga, he is horrified at how the flower industry works, the fact that we have little idea of how much our final invoice will be for our flowers when we place an order and probably less clue when we quote for events, this situation to him seems ridiculous and I certainly wouldn’t like to be interrogated by any “Dragons in the Den” on the subject, of course experience helps, but sometimes we get nasty surprises.
Something that is even more incredulous to him is our own work ethic, the incredible hours, on average Jason works an 80-90 hour week where as I do a pathetic 70-75 for very little financial gain.
But you see it really isn’t about the money, the worst thing that could happen to us is if someone didn’t love their event flowers, where as the worst thing that could happen to my moghul friend is that he didn’t get paid!
So this is why I listen, I want my Brides to love their wedding flowers and if the addition of some carnations gets Cupid on side then they really need to be included.
Years ago I had a meeting with an out of town Bride who really wanted Carnations and British ones to boot, in all of those magical colours, she’d been to see a number of excellent event florists who’d really been quite rude about her choice.
Picture SourceIt turned out that her father who had passed away was a Carnation grower and he’d won many Chelsea Gold Medals for his work, I didn’t know this until the wedding day when everyone was talking about the magnificent carnations and how much he would have approved, so florally she had her dad with her for her wedding day.
I certainly wouldn’t as a matter of course include Carnations, Gypsophilia or Chrysanthemums but if these flowers float your boat, I’m here to listen, but please be warned I intend to show you a plethora of alternatives, precious florists who needs ‘em!
