Who wouldn’t love to play with pretty flowers all day – every day? We hear it all the time: How hard can it be to just put some flowers together? It might help if we answer one simple question: What does a wedding florist do?

Welp, I’m here to share some of our behind-the-scenes of planning an epic event and bringing it to life for our clients’ extra special moments.

Please note: One of the key aspects to maintaining a successful event floral business is establishing your systems and policies for your business operations. Before accepting any clients, it is a good idea to have these items figured out: your contract, payment policies, system of operations, inquiry process, proposal systems, client management systems, marketing operations and strategies, record keeping systems, fulfillment, etc. to ensure a professional experience.

Plus, it is important to have a design background, or the ability to learn from other local designers regarding floral options, local flowers, mechanics, processing for optimal vase life, and working with venues and other vendors.

So, what does a wedding florist do?

Wedding florists are different from your every day retail florists in a couple ways:

• We specialize in weddings and events

  • This means we know how to process your flowers to be at the peak of their bloom cycle the day of your event.

  • This also means that we are excellent planners- calculating exactly how many flowers of each variety we need to create your floral dream to bring your vision to life.

• We network with local venues and vendors

  • This means we have great working relationships with other professionals to ensure a smooth-sailing day. And, we’re able to refer other professionals that may be a great fit for your event needs, personality, and aesthetic (if you haven’t booked them all yet).

• We have a rental inventory at our use for the whole design aesthetic.

  • This is so you don’t have to collect a mish-mosh of decor, store all of that decor to use for one day, and figure out what the heck you’ll do with that decor after your event.

  • This also means that we know exactly how large our vessels are, how large of an arrangement we can create within it, and how each of our decor elements will blend beautifully with your vision.

Wedding Florists Help in your planning process in several ways:

• We’re your peace of mind throughout your planning and design process.

• We help give you assurance on your ideas,

• Answer questions as they arise, just like that famous question, “What does a wedding florist do?” 😉

• Guide you in linen colors that match your floral palette,

• Help coordinate your floral decor to the venue choice,

• Give feedback to help maximize the space,

• Come up with creative ideas to maximize your arrangements and repurpose them throughout the ceremony and reception spaces.

• Then, we prep, design, deliver, install, turn-over, and clean up the decor for the day of your event.

The Inquiry Process:

Your big day starts here! I know every company has their own process for inquiries, but for us at Garden in the Pines we send you a series of emails with valuable content for planning your big day, a guide with what you can expect from our process, and a questionnaire to help give us a more detailed overview of your needs.

Then, we schedule a quick chat at your earliest convenience to discuss your special event and to confirm that we are a good fit. If it seems like we’d be a great match, a custom proposal packet will be created for us to review together in a zoom conversation.

When creating your custom proposal packet we create our recipes for your event to suit your style and needs. Each design is custom for your event to create the size, style, and vibe of arrangement you’re seeking. In this process, we take the time to plan out your big day to the best of our ability, with floral choices you’d love, to create the best value for your event.

By meeting over zoom to walk through our style presentation and customized proposal for your event, we are able to address any ideas, questions, or concerns you may have surrounding your big day!

The Client Experience Process:

Our on-boarding process begins with a signed contract and 15% deposit. Then, you’re set up on our ‘client experience’ process to ensure that all of your questions are answered as they come up, all of your needs are met, and that you feel like we are with you throughout your planning process. We want you to feel comfortable with us! We’re in this process together.

About 3 months before your big day we will schedule a design meeting via zoom to walk through a style board that we created for you, confirm your event needs and details, confirm floral choices you love, etc. This helps to confirm our business is on the same page with your vision so that we can exceed your expectations on your special day.

About 1 month before your wedding you will receive a final confirmation of all of your event needs. At this time your final payment will also be due so that we can place our orders for your event to ensure we have everything we need to fulfill your floral dreams.

We believe that the client experience should be centered around communication. We want to over communicate so we can exceed your expectations for your beautiful day.

The Week of Your Wedding:

One of the key aspects to hiring a full-service florist, is the ability to relax the week of your wedding. We want you to be able to visit with out-of-town guests, schedule your spa treatments, enjoy your final ‘single’ days with your fiancé and friends, and soak in the feelings that you’re experiencing. While you are doing all of those things:

The week of your wedding we will have an abundance of prep work to prepare our studio and your florals before we design with them. We get all of our buckets sanitized and ready for flowers to hydrate. Our wholesaler is located an hour away so we pick up your blooms and get them back to the studio for processing.

Processing is a term that we use in the industry that means we hydrate and prep the blooms for designing. So this means we fill our buckets with clean water, strip all but a few top leaves from your stems, strip the thorns from roses, and allow the flowers to rest and hydrate for the rest of the day. Flowers that bloom too quickly will go into our cooler until we’re ready to design with them..

The following day we begin designing and each day up until your event. The night before your event we pack all of our materials and designs for safe travels. And, on the day of the event we will pick up our box truck/ van rental to ensure we have enough space to pack your blooms safely. We’ll rig the van to keep everything up right, un-squished, and safe.

Can you imagine trying to store dozens of 5 gallon buckets, design your arrangements (especially if you don’t have any idea how many of each type of bloom you’re going to be using in each arrangement), keeping your finicky florals cool until your wedding, and trying to travel to the venue with all of these arrangements, yourselves, and set up the morning of your wedding? ESPECIALLY, if the venue only allows a 2 hour set up before your ceremony? Talk about a stressful experience!

The day of the wedding:

The day of your wedding we deliver your bridal bouquet & personal items in time for photography detail photos. Then, we’ll make our way to set up for the ceremony and reception space. Upon arrival, we begin set up each item based on the timeline that we have created.

So, for example, If it’s a scorching July afternoon wedding ceremony outdoors, we will put the blooms our for the ceremony at the very last second to ensure they don’t wilt before the ceremony start time. Likewise, if the wedding is indoors with air conditioning, perhaps we could set up the ceremony decor first since it would be ok until the ceremony start time.

At the conclusion of the ceremony we will turn over decor for the reception for any items we’re able to repurpose.

At the conclusion of the reception, we will come back to clean up floral decor and collect our rental items.

We want you to sip mimosas all morning, dance to your ‘getting ready playlist,’ and feel at ease the morning of your event. We want you to soak in every little moment leading up the walking down the aisle, chatting with your guests, sipping cocktails and eating hor d’oeuvres, dancing the night away, and to head off on your honeymoon immediately following your send off.

Behind the scenes:

In the behind-the-scenes prep for your special day we will be working to:

• Secure staff support to help with large-scale wedding set ups, design work, and clean up.

• We’ll coordinate with the venue to confirm set up & clean up details & receive a copy of the seating chart,

• Submit our insurance requirements to the venue.

• Order hard-goods such as vessels, candles, candle holders, glassware, linens, and structures.

• Create our design plans and recipes to easily work from and confirm all of the details are in line with your inspiration photos/ design dream.

• Test mechanics for large-scale installations

• Among other little details that help to create a one-of-a-kind experience.

Want to Know More About What Does a Wedding Florist Do?

We are so grateful for all of our clients that trust in our business to bring their floral vision to life. We are here throughout your planning process every step of the way and truly want you to enjoy every special moment of your big day.

If you have an upcoming event, please inquire here for our full service wedding florals. We can’t wait to create some floral magic for you!