The journey to beautiful wedding flowers begins with the choice of a florist dedicated to bringing your vision to life.
A wedding florist is not just a vendor who shows up at the event to arrange the flowers, but rather an artist who contributes to the overall aesthetic of your celebration. They will have been working tirelessly for months behind the scenes on your flowers.
The perfect floral arrangements are planned long before the special day. At your initial consultation, you will be asked a few questions to help me collect the basic but important details.
You may have an idea of the colours and themes you would like & how your day will feel. I then have to align that with the flowers that are in season or available and make the right choices for your style.
After the initial chat, if we both feel we could be a good match, I plunge into planning your wedding flowers. I will then work on a detailed design proposal. Hours of time go into this - there is so much to consider, your vision, the venue, the season, the overall desired aesthetics and so on.
Once the proposal is agreed, and the booking fee paid to hold the date, then the planning begins!!
We arrange site visits, design arrangements, produce buying lists for the flowers, source sundries & mechanics, create schedules for the set up & book freelancers…and that’s just the planning stage! But all this planning ensures everything comes together on the day, working seamlessly with your other vendors to deliver your dream wedding.
I provide a bespoke service tailored to each client, handling everything from the initial concept to the final installation.
There are typical tasks that are part of every wedding no matter how distinct the clients' requirements are. This is the true ‘behind the scenes’ work you may not know is happening and so here is a short list if you are curious about the invisible part of my work:
With a keen eye for quality, I order will your blooms about a week before your wedding, this is quite a specific process on a website that is essentially an auction. I want to secure the best that the season has to offer. I shop around as not everyone will have what I need or want! We have to time the delivery so that the flowers reach their peak just in time for your special day. This is different for many varieties - experience is key here. Many florist will also make multiple trips to flower markets and flower farms - these are all super early trips, markets open at 2am!
Conditioning - this is a huge part of any flower work. Once the flowers get to my studio, every stem needs to be carefully handled, leaves striped, stems re-cut. Flowers are then placed in clean deep water and need to sit resting for 24hrs. This is a very lengthy process but so important. Without this, the flowers will wilt, won't last and perform very well. There will be thousands of stems for each wedding that will be handled by myself and my team.
Planning and administration are crucial parts of the process, by now I have spent hours coordinating with other suppliers, booking sundries, ordering flowers, and dealing with freelancers. Booking a florist who caters to such details will save you a lot of mundane tasks to deal with.
One week before the event, the final work begins in my studio. I attentively clean and prepare vessels, condition flowers, and make arrangements with my team - early starts and long days - we get fuelled by coffee and cake.
On the wedding day, I spend several hours on site creating ceremony florals, sometimes these are multiple days, depending on the installations that may need to be created in the days before your wedding. These are the 20,000 step plus days - comfy shoes are essential!
And after the event, the wedding florist's work is not done. Breakdown and clearance of your flowers and arrangements and then an extra day in the studio to sort, clean and put vases away to prepare for the next wedding.
I hope this has been a helpful window into the works of a wedding florist. There is so much more to the job than just the flowers themselves.