One thing that customers often say to us after visiting our shop or seeing us set up floral displays at a wedding is that they “would love to play with flowers all day” instead of whatever they do for a living. While I completely understand the sentiment, getting creative with flowers is such a small part of what we do. The joy I feel when I do actually get to design with flowers makes the rest of the work worth it.
I see my business, Roadside Blooms, as having two separate entities: our wedding floral work and our retail plant, flower and crystal shop. They both take similar skill sets to be successful including customer service, patience, empathy, problem solving, creative thinking and the ability to withstand a lot of manual labor.
A week in the life of a florist during wedding season (March to June and September to November) seems like an unbroken cycle between events, complete with highs and lows. On Sundays and Mondays, we are cleaning up from the weekend events, pulling flowers out of arrangements and putting anything viable in our donation buckets for Amor Healing Kitchen or into our compost bins to create new soil one day. Then we clean wax out of all of the containers, clean mountains of buckets and sanitize the cooler before the next batch of flowers comes in. On Tuesdays, we pull hard goods, such as candles, vases and arbor pieces, and prep them for the week’s events.
Flowers typically come in on Wednesdays, either from local farmers or from FedEx delivering blooms from our West Coast farm connections. It takes all day and a large team to carefully process flowers by plucking off not-so-pretty petals, dethorning roses and giving everything a fresh cut and freshwater. On Thursdays, we are finally beginning to design using the “recipes” that we thought through before we ordered the flowers. Without fail, something came in not looking so great or we are short of something else and need to run to local flower wholesalers to fill in gaps. It can be stressful working with perishable products as any chef can attest to. On Fridays, we are finishing designs, wrapping ribbons around bouquets, double-checking everything and packing up for the next day’s events. We hit the ground running first thing Saturday morning with a mix of excitement and nervous anticipation of the day ahead as we pack the van with candles, vases, ladders, tools, heavy buckets of flowers and arrangements.
When we pull up to the venue, the first thing we do after unloading flowers into a cool area is to check in with the planner to see how the setup is going. Often rental companies can be delayed in setting up tents or tables which forces us to pivot our own timeline. So flexibility and grace is a must. If the wedding couple chose a clear-topped tent, then we have to keep the flowers inside or in a cool place until the last minute because in our climate, they act as a greenhouse and cause flowers to wilt quickly and taper candles to become deformed. While clear top tents are beautiful at night, they are a florist’s nightmare. We are problem solvers.
One of the best feelings is to give the bouquet to a bride and see the delight in her eyes. I will point out flowers in the bouquet and make them smell a few and remind them that our sense of smell is intimately linked to our recall memory so whenever they smell this fragrance in the future they can be reminded of their special day. It’s really an honor in these moments to help them relax and refocus.
Setups that have installations such as hanging floral chandeliers, floral walls, arbors, etc. are the most fun albeit hard on the body with all of their ladder work. Lastly, we set the tables with flowers and candles and give each arrangement one last look over and replace anything that doesn’t look its best. We snag a few photos to put on social media and leave before the ceremony begins, all to return to break it down after the last song of the evening.
So much work goes into each event way before wedding week comes. There are design meetings, proposal writing, flower and hardgood ordering, maintaining a studio, vehicles, and staff, accounting, and finding time to work on the future of the business. But it’s always a whirlwind filled with beauty, creative opportunities and a lot of laughs, made possible by mountains of nitty gritty work. It’s always worth it, even if “playing with flowers” is just a small part of the job.
Toni Reale is the owner of Roadside Blooms, a unique flower, crystal and plant shop in Park Circle in North Charleston. Online at roadsideblooms.com. Its new location at 4491 Durant Ave. is open this month.
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