Happy Wedding Wednesday! We've already covered how to find an amazing florist, as well as the floral consultation and proposal. Once you have a proposal you are happy with, congrats! You're ready to book! Now it's time to sit back and relax, while we get to work. This week, we are talking about what happens after booking a wedding florist. There are so many things that go on behind-the-scenes that you may not know about!
So what happens after booking a wedding florist? That's when we jump into action! We do not just sit around waiting for your wedding week. There is a ton of work to do for your wedding, and we can do a lot of it in advance. Here are some of the tasks we complete for every wedding.
- Designing or tweaking "recipes." We painstakingly calculate how many stems of each botanical ingredient we will be using for your wedding, so that we can place orders. For farmer-florists like me, it means I have to grow the right things, in the right amounts, at the right times. I sometimes also have to order ingredients I'm not growing, or that performed poorly. (You can only imagine the depths of my spreadsheets, y'all!) Why go to all this trouble? Getting the right number of stems is the difference between making or losing money on a wedding! And I care deeply about getting you the most amazing flowers money can buy, even if I'm not growing them myself.
- Ordering and sourcing flowers. We have to make sure we order or source the right flowers for your wedding. Since flowers are perishable, we must harvest or obtain them the week of your wedding. We also have to source decor elements, tools, rental vans, and labor for your wedding.
- Making sample pieces. Sometimes, clients request sample pieces to make sure we are all on the same page. For that additional cost, we will make an extra trip to the farm or market and create those sample pieces for feedback.
- Site visits. If a florist has never worked your venue before, a site visit to the venue is a must! There are some other specific scenarios where site visits are appropriate, too.
- Refining details. I really like to check in with clients about sourcing questions, changes, or tweaks. Right now, it's more important than ever, since coronavirus has turned our world upside-down. Every time a wedding date approaches, I'm contacting clients to see what their Plan B (or C, or D) is. Clients may also request changes, which sometimes requires updating the contract.
- Your wedding week. The week of your wedding is controlled chaos. We have to obtain your flowers, condition thousands of stems, and make tons of beautiful things. We also have to load vans, deliver flowers, set things up, break things down, and do it all over again the next week! If florists are slow to answer e-mails between Wednesdays and Sundays during wedding season, this is why!
I hope this helps you understand what happens after booking a wedding florist. So much hard work (and love) goes into every single wedding! If you want to learn more about what goes on behind-the-scenes before your wedding, you can get this week's free guide! Just enter your contact info below so I can send it to you.
I can't believe this is the penultimate week of Wedding Flowers 101! Next week, we will talk about ways to reduce wedding planning stress. I think that's probably relevant for every couple planning a wedding right now! As always, if you have any questions you'd like to see answered, please leave them in the comments! Thanks for reading!