DesignsandEvents: Helpful Florist Wedding Tips and WeddingWire Vendor Booking Timeline

Hi Everyone! Today I am excited to be sharing with you the new Vendor Booking Timeline from WeddingWire! It is a very informative graphic which helps brides and their families when it comes to planning that all important day. It is easy to read and concise in its information, making it a handy tool for brides. WeddingWire has just made the process that much easier!

I was inspired by WeddingWire* to include a few helpful hints of my own along with their graphic to help brides when it comes to booking and working with a florist.

To begin, as noted in the below graphic, booking your florist 10 months before your wedding is a good rule of thumb. In doing so, hopefully, you will be able to retain your first choice in floral designers. That will go a long way to setting your mind at ease.

My deepest desire when meeting a bride for the first time is for her experience to be as enjoyable as possible. There can be a lot of stress associated with planning a wedding, as many of you may already know, and I do not want to be one to add any more stress to the process! After all, I deal with flowers. This should be fun!! It is my job to be as helpful and creative as I possibly can. That is the first order of business for me, along with creating the floral displays of the bride's dreams, of course! I always hope by the time the wedding actually comes my bride will have a greater appreciation and/or love for flowers than when we first started. Flowers are one of the great joys of life, as far as I am concerned :).

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Aside from the pure joy of flowers, I do have some guidelines that I think are helpful when working with a florist. I always ask my brides to come with an image of their wedding dress, either by way of photo or on their phones. (We can hide the image if need be if the fiancé is involved in the visit.) The wedding dress is really the beginning point for me as the floral designer. The choice that the bride has made in choosing her wedding gown usually represents her inner style and taste and, most likely, will carry through to all her other wedding design choices.

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You can see from these photos from some of my previous weddings, the dress the bride chose definitely was an indicator of the style and feeling of the wedding to come.

Keri's wedding was a formal affair in an opulent ballroom.

Jenny wanted an outdoor wedding, very rustic and free-feeling.

Kiersten wanted a more traditional wedding with the ceremony in her church and the reception to be held at a winery in New Hampshire.

As you can see, each gown truly was indicative of the style of the wedding.

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Another bit of advice I would like to offer is that a bride should try to come to her initial florist visit with an idea or vision, if you will, of her wedding day in mind. Do you want it to be rustic? Are you more traditional? Are you a true romantic? Is the wedding going to be in an urban setting like a NYC hotel ballroom or will it be in a more open area like a cabana by the ocean? All of these details matter when it comes to the correct flowers to choose and the right style for the bouquets. Of course, there are no steadfast rules. It is your day. You can have whatever you want but, it is nice to have a starting point.

Hopefully, you, the bride, have combed through tons of magazines and have been searching on-line for ideas. And, hopefully, you have started to formulate an idea in her head. You do not have to have a theme, per se, but knowing what you like and don't like is very helpful to the floral journey. Bringing as many pictures as you can to the first meeting to give your florist an idea of what you really like when it comes to flowers and arrangements will set everything into motion. The floral designer will also discuss with you what kinds of flowers you like and how they may be incorporated into your wedding.

Do you like classic roses?

How about specialty Garden Roses?

Dahlias?

Hydrangeas, Anemones, Lisianthus, Stock?

Or do you like something really usual such as, the Star of Bethlehem?

I, often, create a private Pinterest board with my brides. It is an easy and enjoyable way to connect with them. We share ideas and many times weed out what the bride DOES NOT like, which is all the more helpful to me. I, on the other hand, can sometimes make suggestions of flowers or styles that they may not have thought of on their own. Pinterest offers all sorts of choices and provides a great inspirational process.

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Finally, and this is the hard one, the bride should have a budget in mind. Everyone hates this part. I do too! However, unless you have an unlimited budget, you are, most likely, going to have to compromise here or there when it comes to the flowers. Try to have in mind what your priorities are. If the ceremony flowers are of the most importance to you, place a large part of your budget there and make compromises elsewhere. Perhaps, the venue is offering candles for the centerpieces. That could be a good place to make adjustments to your "vision". However, if you want the reception venue to be flowing with flowers, you may opt out of the candles and place a larger part of your budget into that area. Your florist is there to help you with all these decisions and can often suggest less expensive alternatives to make your budget work.

Well, if you are just beginning your wedding journey, "Congratulations!!!" This should be one of the happiest times of your life! The Vendor Booking Timeline from WeddingWire is a great guide to help you along the road. I wish you all the blessings and joys of this special time of your life and if I can be of any service to you, please do not hesitate to get in contact with me.