the Wedding Florist By Delinda McCann

The author with a bride's maid's bouquet. Photographer: Hubby Note: The florist is exhausted.

 
Part of my business involves doing flowers for weddings. I love doing wedding flowers, but then, maybe I’m a masochist.
 
Most wedding planning books tell the prospective bride to start planning six months to a year before her big day. I have done flowers for weddings when the bride planned for a whole week before the ceremony and forgot to order flowers until the Wednesday before a Saturday ceremony. As long as the bride is happy with whatever is blooming at that moment, we can make the flowers happen. Other brides have given me six months notice. For these occasions, I was able to plant flowers that would work for the organized bride.
 
I just finished the flowers for a wedding in Portland. As usual, we learned a few things. The challenge with this wedding was that it was in Portland.  We are on Vashon Island, near Seattle. The Mother-of-the-Bride (MOB) wanted to take the flowers down on Friday, which meant the arrangements needed to be made on Thursday for a Sunday wedding. The main flowers were supposed to be dahlias. From a picking on Wednesday and Thursday, holding until Sunday is too much to ask of a dahlia. They just don’t hold up that long. One of the advantages my business has is that we can furnish short lived flowers like English Roses and Dahlias because we don’t have to ship-except for out-of-town family weddings. Moral of the story: If you want flowers that are shipped, choose something sturdy like tea roses, hydrangea, chrysanthemum, lilies, or tulips and daffodils.

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Bride with her parents at Cathedral Park, St. Johns, Portland OR.

The bride wanted white and silver with touches of apricot for her colors. St. Johns OR.

Our other big wedding this summer occurred on one of the hottest days of the year. The Seattle area is generally pretty cool. Ninety-degrees just doesn’t happen all that often. Few flowers will hold up all day in ninety-degree heat. So, on the hottest day of the summer, the bride was going for an English garden look. The challenge was to keep all the flowers refrigerated until two hours before the wedding then try to get everything set up. The caterers and the bakery both had the same idea, so we had the caterers, and flower ladies tripping over each other. We were furnishing flowers to decorate the cake and the cake didn’t arrive until just before the ceremony started. It would have melted if it sat in the heat any longer than absolutely necessary, but I confess, I was in a bit of a panic over what to do with the cake flowers.
 
Time, distance and heat are not our only challenges in wedding flowers. Fashion is the worst culprit for wedding flower failures. For several years, all the brides wanted a perfectly round ball for their bouquet. Those balls looked nice in the magazines. Of course the magazine bride is getting paid a small fortune to hold a five-pound bouquet eighteen inches away from her dress. A real bride is going to want to rest her arms, shoulders and neck occasionally.  The second she takes a brief respite, she will either crush one side of the bouquet, or get pollen and flower dye on her lovely white dress. Fashion is good for inspiration but isn’t practical.
 

Ah, delicate woodland flowers suffering in ninety-degree weather. They held up through the ceremony.

I loved the little 1/2 buckets we used to hang small bouquets for this barn reception.

It was well over ninety-degrees in this barn but the flowers held through the reception.

The Portland wedding was lovely and the pictures of ideas for bouquets I got from the bride looked doable. I dutifully built a stunning bouquet using succulents. Those succulents were heavy, so I reinforced them well. I moved the bouquet from my table to the refrigerator. The weight of the succulents caused them to slide sideways, loosening the whole construction. I set the bouquet in the refrigerator and closed the door. All was well when the thing was supported in a dark refrigerator. I brought it out to transport. The heavy succulents slid down in the bouquet crushing the dahlia. I put the thing in the car and drove a hundred-fifty miles and lifted it out of its secure holder. Even the gentle motion of careful driving caused the heavy succulents to shift and break one side stem. I repaired the construction and delivered the flowers. Someone needed to unload something else and pushed my cooler aside causing the bouquet inside to tilt sideways and break another stem. I repaired that, but wasn’t happy with the finished product. Fortunately, by this time, the bride was so anxious, I could have handed her a bunch of turnips and she would have smiled and posed for yet another picture.
 
The bride’s bouquet must look lovely for the few minutes the bride is walking down the aisle and for the forty-five minutes to an hour she is holding it for photographs. However, let’s face it, a bride’s bouquet may seem like it should be delicate and lovely for a fleeting moment. In reality, a wedding is the floral equivalent of a war zone. Even the most careful, sedate bride, will try to point while holding her bouquet.  It will get set down, dropped, swung, and crushed against Great-Aunt Constanza.
 
At the end of the day, the father of the bride will look at the florist’s bill and exclaim, “Why were the flowers so expensive? We could have picked some out of the garden for free.” Still, I love doing flowers for weddings.

Peony Bride's bouquet from the English Garden wedding.

Silver and white bouquet with succulents.

Flower crown for a young girl.

Bride's maid bouquet from English Garden wedding.

English garden table arrangements.

Small arrangement featuring a succulent. This is from the St. Johns Portland wedding. I loved this arrangement where the heavy succulent stayed in its pot in a basket.

These flowers are for a wedding where the bride asked for buckets of colorful flowers. She arranged them how she wished.