As promised, a continuation of customer service and how we aim for excellence.
Providing flowers for daily deliveries and event work are two very different categories. When arranging flowers for daily deliveries, it’s important that all the flowers coming in from the wholesaler are fresh from the farm. We aim to have our arrangements last 4+ days. When arranging flowers for events, the goal is for the flowers to look perfect on the day of the event. It is a little bit less stressful per se, but with events comes a different responsibility. Weddings, for instance, can be a very high stress environment. Many times there are timeframe restrictions placed by the venues in regards to when we can head out and arrange flowers on site. Imagine having a hanging installation, arch, aisles and only being allowed 3 to 4 hours to get everything done. Manpower and organization is key to successfully completing these events.
In my early years of floristry we would work on about 20 to 30 weddings per year. There was one particular wedding. My husband and I were setting up at a hotel. One of the ceremony vases busted as we were placing the arrangement in its position. We did not have an extra vase and we only had about an hour and a half before the ceremony started. So what did we do? I had my husband run to HomeGoods to find two vases. Of course it was a very stressful situation, but in the end it all worked out.
Another very awkward wedding situation was when I received a phone call from the hotel coordinator three hours before the wedding was supposed to start. She asked me where am I and when do I expect to arrive. At that moment, I began shaking as I was seven months pregnant and we were working on flowers but our contract showed that the wedding was for the next day. The bride signed the contract with the wrong wedding date. My sister saw the terror in my eyes, and she saw that I was not breathing regularly and she helped me calm down. Fortunately, all the personals were ready. The centerpieces and ceremony install was not complete so we loaded the van quickly and I worked in the back of the van on the ceremony piece while my sister drove the van to the hotel in downtown Chicago. Once we arrived at the venue, we installed the ceremony backdrop, and then continued working on the centerpieces behind the scenes. Believe it or not we were able to have everything ready on time. I never even shared with the bride that she provided us with the wrong wedding date, although my sister was secretly planning to have a word with the bride. I’m so glad she never did get to see the bride.