Your wedding flowers should make your ceremony and reception more beautiful, not detract from your day. Admittedly, there’s so much to think about when choosing Palm Springs wedding flowers – the type of bloom, what’s in season, different arrangements, the bouquets, etc. – but taking the time to work with your floral designer to create a comprehensive wedding florist contact is worth the time it takes.
Ensuring that your bouquets and centerpieces are as breathtaking as can be is more often than not a matter of whittling down a large list of wedding flower designers and asking the ones you truly adore writing a proposal based on the arrangements you’ve discussed. These proposals should read a lot like the contract you’ll eventually put together, with all flora itemized by cost; the date and time of the wedding; delivery, set-up, and break down details; and any extra fees listed.
Once you choose your wedding florist, he or she will meet with you to complete details and show you a sample bouquet or centerpiece. You may want to look through your florist’s portfolio to point out other designs you like. But as floral design is an art form, it’s unlikely that your wedding flower designer will be able to give you an exact description of your future arrangements. What they can give (both in conversation and in your contract) is the exact numbers of stems that will be used in each arrangement, the types of blooms and colors, and descriptions and prices of any auxiliary items like vases, candles, and ribbon.
Some wedding florists will ask that they be allowed to make color or even breed substitutions in cases of necessity – make sure your floral designer knows if this is absolutely unacceptable, though realize that Mother Nature may have other ideas. You’ll be able to rest more easily in advance of your wedding day if you give your florist color swatches so he or she knows what you mean by “red” and provide a list of acceptable substitutions. You can also specify ratios of flowers. Perhaps you’d like a half-and-half mix of red roses and green hydrangea. Make that clear so you don’t end up with a big bouquet of hydrangea studded with a few choice roses.
In short, working with a wedding florist is different from working with other wedding vendors. While a cake designer, for example, can make the exact same wedding cake hundreds of times, each bouquet and boutonnière and centerpiece made by a floral designer will be unique because every flower is unique. However, you can maximize your chances of getting precisely the colors, sizes, and shapes you want by learning and using specific flower names. A Love rose and a Olympiad rose are both beautiful red roses, but can look quite different.