The Last Bouquet

The last bouquet. August 18, 2012.

It was time to make a change.  I've closed up shop as an independent florist now, finishing my last wedding a couple of weeks ago, and I'm feeling relieved.  A little sad, but mostly relieved.  It was a tough one to let go, but the stress just isn't worth the money (or lack thereof) anymore...  But it was worth it at one point.

The joy of making the perfect bouquet has now been overtaken by the details...  Things like the one hundred stems of [whatever main flower I chose to use] came in moldy (yes, this specific thing has happened to me four times), or didn't come in at all (this happened too), and I now have six hours to find replacements in order to spend an entire sleepless night piecing together bouquets out of whatever I could find at other shops...  Things like having ordered all of the flowers for one price, only to find out that since the order, the price of this one flower has skyrocketed due to a storm/drought/sourcing problem and now I'm making forty bucks on 12 hours of work...  Things like that.


Don't get me wrong, I still LOVE doing wedding flowers.  I love the look on a bride's face when she first sees her bouquet, knowing that it's exactly what she pictured.  I love pinning boutonnieres on nervous grooms that are trying to laugh through their pre-ceremony jitters.  I love making the flowers match the exact style and feel of the wedding.  I love making bouquets the most.  It's like an intricate puzzle of color and shapes, everything going together in just the right order.  If I could pick a top 3 of all of the bouquets I've ever made, I would probably pick these three (left), although I had a really hard time just now going through all of my pictures!  I picked the rainbow bouquet because it was the most fun, the fall bouquet because it was challenging in style and shape, and the lilies and blue orchids bouquet becuase I just loved the process of making that one.

Last week, upon turning in the last buckets from my last order to my old flower shop, I received a job offer from the new owner to come in whenever I would like to just to make arrangements, and I'm debating taking it. But we'll see how it goes.