Sometimes people like to write things about florist’s shops. Here are two things you need to know, the most egregiously wrong things.
1. It makes no fucking sense to sketch out a bouquet before you make it. Every individual flower is different in a way that cannot really be adjusted the way other building materials can be adjusted, and each individual bouquet is unique. Just put the fucking flowers together.
2. No one — in months and months of working at the flower shop — has ever cared what the flower/color of the flower means. No one’s ever asked. It’s just not something people tend to care about outside of fiction and it’s certainly not something most florists know. You know what florists know? What looks good and is thematically appropriate.
Here’s an actual list of the symbology of flowers, as professionals use it:
Yellow – for friends, hospitals
Pink – girls, girlfriends, babies, bridesmaids
Red – love
Purple – queens
White – marriage and death (DO NOT SEND TO HOSPITALS)
Pink and purple – ur mum
Red, orange, and yellow – ur mum if she’s stylish
Red, yellow, blue – dudes and small children
Blue and white – rare, probably a wedding
Red and white – love for fancy bitches
Here are what the flowers actually mean to a florist:
Carnations – fuck u these are meaningless filler-flowers, not even your administrative assistant likes them, show some creativity
Alstroemeria – by and large very similar to carnations but I like them better
Tea roses – cute and lil and come several to a stalk, a classy filler flower
Moluccella laevis – filler flower but CHOICE
Delphinium – not as interesting as moluccella but purple so okay I guess
Blue thistle – FUCK YEAH, some fucking textural variety at last! you’re getting this for a dude, aren’t you?
Chrysanthemums – barely better than carnations but better is still better
Gladiolus – ooh, risky business, someone understands the use of the Y-axis, very good
Long-stem roses – yeah whatever
Lilies – LBD, looks good with everything, get used as often as possible
Hydrangeas – thirsty fuckers, divas of the flower world and rightly so, treat them right and they make you look good
Gerbera daisies – the rose’s hippie cousin, hotter but no one admits it
Peonies – CHA-CHING, everybody’s absolute favorite but you need guap
Orchids – if this isn’t for a wedding you’re probably trying too hard but they’re expensive so keep ordering them
You know what matters? THE CUSTOMER’S BUDGET. THAT’S TELLING.
-$20 – if you’re not under 12, fuck off, get your sugar something else
$30 – good for bouquets but an arrangement will be lame
$40 – getting there, there’s something that can be done with that. you can get some gerbs or roses with that and not have them look stupidly solo.
$50 to $70 – tolerable
$80 – FINALLY. It sounds elitist but this really is the basic amount of money you should expect to spend on an arrangement that matters. That’s your Mother’s Day arrangement. You’re probably not going to spend $80 on a bouquet.
$90 to $130 – THE GOOD SHIT, you’re likely to get some orchids
$130+ – Weddings and death. This amount of money gets you a memorial arrangement or a handmade bridal bouquet. Don’t spend this on a Mother’s Day or a Babe I Love You arrangement, buy whosits a massage or something.
Everything needs greening and if you don’t think that you’re an idiot.
As a new employee, when you start making arrangements, you can’t see the mistakes you’re making because you’re brand new and you’re learning an art form from the ground up.
With a few exceptions customers don’t have a clear plan in mind. They want you to develop the bouquet for them. They want something that will delight their little sweetbread but you’re lucky if they know that person’s favorite color, let alone flower.
Flower shops don’t typically have every kind of flower in every kind of color. Customers generally aren’t assed about that. Most people don’t care about the precise shade of the rose or having daffodils in July, because they’re not boning up on flower language before they buy. That would imply that they’ve got a clear bouquet in mind and, again, they don’t.
Being a florist is essentially a lot like what I imagine being a mortician is about. You’re basically keeping dead things looking good for as long as possible. You keep the product in the fridge so it doesn’t rot and look horrible by the time the family gets a whack at it, and in the meanwhile you put it in a nice container.
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