This week marks my third week with Floriography Flowers. I got to focus a lot more on the business side of things this week, such as creating the inventory system for Floriography. It has been a big learning lesson for me in general working with a fairly new entrepreneurial company as I want to be a entrepreneur myself. A lot of the business terms and knowledge need to be learned on one's own which is why lots of sole proprietorship companies struggle in the first few years as I learned in my foundations of business class last semester. It took the entire week, but I sat down and organized and counted over 1500 inventory items. It was great experience using excel and organization skills of what it will take in the future to run a successful business.
Despite doing the inventory this week, I got to help set up another wedding this weekend in the bride's parents vacation house in Santa Fe. Two unexpected things happened this weekend that made it a rather stressful set up. As soon as my boss and the other interns and I arrived at the venue, the bride and her bridesmaids immediately greeted us. This does not usually occur since Mrs. Emily makes sure to communicate to the bride that there is time set aside after we get all set up that she will deliver personals. After approaching us, they demanded to see the bridal bouquet and bridesmaids bouquets immediately as they were too excited, although the tone in their voice seemed nervous and anxious. Mrs. Emily bought some time by telling them she would grab the flowers for them so they didn't have to walk in the dirt and would deliver them asap. This was the first time this occurred to me as an intern, but Mrs. Emily handled it really well and after all, they are your clients and you have to try and meet in the middle to make them happy.
Some lessons that I have noticed, but really caught onto this week were the delivery and maintenance of the floral arrangements. Mrs. Emily's personal van is the company's main source of transportation to and from the weddings. Mrs. Emily always leaves her car running for a long period of time before placing the arrangements inside. This was a little bit of a hurdle for me with my over protective personality of always locking my car, but we always make sure one person had eyes on the vehicle while we load. When arriving at the venue, it is important to keep your car going with AC at full blast to ensure the maintenance of the arrangements. It is difficult for a florist setting up for any event, because you only have a short amount of time, but you also want to wait until the last minute to hang up the flowers especially when they are in the sun so they are not ruined. Set up is a huge time and waiting game majority of the time weighing our chances of holding off setting up until later so they look just as beautiful when the event actually starts.
The next unexpected thing that happened was actually a safety incident. This wedding had an arch at the end of the aisle which the bride requested flower arrangements on both sides of the arch. While Mrs. Emily was on the ladder putting up the flowers, she had the floral cutters with her and before coming down to do the other side, left them on the top of the ladder. When she went to move the ladder, the floral cutters came tumbling down and stabbed her near the neck. While we all stood waiting to see if anything happened, blood started gushing from her neck. While one intern ran inside to grab towels the other intern and I made sure Mrs. Emily was okay and ran to get the first aid kit in the car. While applying pressure to her wound Mrs. Emily instructed us calmly tell the wedding planner that she needed assistance on the arch. While trying to not run we got the wedding planner who was clueless when Mrs. Emily was trying to hide behind the trees and immediately started helping her once she discovered what was going on. The other interns and I now had to finish the arch on our own. The bride's father ended up being an ER doctor and Mrs. Emily was treated appropriately (what are the odds?). Although it was a stressful and intense situation, the other interns and I got to go off of our intuition and complete set up on our own. While it was stressful, it was cool to have a chance to design on our own and everything still got done. Mrs. Emily is now okay, but has spent the weekend resting!
I am learning that you cannot beat the view of Santa Fe. The sky and sun shining through the clouds was magical, and again left me wishing I could attend this weeding. Photos of the wedding are below.