Inside the Design Bench! Part 1

I guess most people would think that all the flowers for a wedding come in on Friday and get delivered on Saturday. There could be nothing further from the truth. Luckily for us, flowers take time to hydrate and open but also the process of designing is a much longer and labor intense one than most people would realize. The flowers above have just arrived for our bride Erin, who gets married this Saturday. Stock, delphinium, roses, hypericum berries and hydrangea will all be masterfully arranged into her bouquets and centerpieces! A team effort is definitely necessary and most weddings take about 2 or 3 days to create from start to finish! With three or four weddings each weekend, it's necessary to plan our time efficiently!

Designer Rocio is doing the next step to the centerpieces which is adding the lovely assortment of greens such as seeded euc, geranium, ruscus and mint. These centerpieces are already gorgeous before even on single flower gets added!

Working in assembly line fashion, Designer David artfully adds the flowers. In this case the centerpieces are getting deep blue hydrangea, lavender roses, deep purple stock, green hypericum berries, queen Anne's lace and deep blue delphinium. After a designing they get a deep spritz of Finishing Touch hydrating spray and then go into the cooler to continue their processing.

Melissa is creating the two babies breath wreaths that will grace the front doors to the reception site. This is a slow and painstaking task as full coverage is necessary to give the desired effect.

When the flowers arrive for a wedding, they are hydrated and left to open at room temperature before being designed and then placed into the cooler. With 3 or 4 weddings each weekend, the prep area and coolers are a revolving door of flowers in all different shapes, sizes and colors. Coordination is necessary to do whatever items can be done ahead and leave more delicate items for later designing. By the time Friday night rolls around all Saturday weddings are complete and in the cooler until it's time to load and go! Each wedding is grouped together making for a beautiful display of colors!

Designer Sheryl painstakingly creates all the boutonnieres and corsages by hand. It's not unusual for her to work for 6 or 8 hours straight! Attention to detail is vital in this process as each wedding has particular requests for these pieces. Each piece is individually boxed and tagged. Assistant Yarrow makes tags in advance for Sheryl, as per the brides instructions. Sheryl also has to make sure they are correctly bagged together for easy routing on the wedding day. Brides usually need some of these pieces to go to her location and others to go to the church or ceremony site. Sheryl carefully reads each wedding proposal and bridal questionnaire to insure each order is correct.

By the time Erin's wedding flowers are done and ready to go, the flowers and details of her wedding will have run through at least 9 or 10 people here at the shop. Each of us have a responsibility from helping Erin make flower choices and typing proposals, creating tags, setting up containers, assisting her with payments, and not least of all the prepping, arranging and delivering of her flowers. Whew!! Who knew that weddings were so time consuming and detail oriented but they are.

Look for Part 2 - the finishing touches, delivery and set up of Erin's gorgeous wedding!!