Going out in style was an understatement for my last wedding with Floriography Flowers. This wedding was what all of us dream of with limitless floral designing at the Four Seasons in Santa Fe. Preparation for the whole team began the week before. Mrs. Emily sat us all down and walked us through her diagrams, and her vision for the wedding. Everyone joked that next week would be floral hell week because of how massive it was. The bride had everything from rentals, to 24 centerpieces, and to 6 ft floral letters of the bride's and groom's initials. Needless to say, we were pretty excited. Work began on Monday prepping the warehouse for the large floral order coming on Tuesday. Final cleaning measures were taken and we all filled buckets with water and floral food for processing flowers the next day. Tuesday was full on processing mode with over 30 boxes of flowers coming in, everyone had a station in the designing room. Processing took a little over three hours, and then the designers worked on the rehearsal dinner florals. Wednesday and Thursday were full on designing days and prepping days making the peg board walls and any other construction or packing project that needed to be completed. What was neat was that Mrs. Emily ordered lunch for the whole team each day of the week. It is so important to make your employees feel safe, happy, and appreciated at work. In foundations of business we talked a lot about employee benefits, and retention strategies such as letting one's dog come to work, providing lunch and stock options. What I learned from that is that your business is only as strong as the "weakest" link and it is important to treat all your employees with respect. Floriography also had a mission to make the environment better by always having recycling bins all week for the boxes and taking it to the recycling center at the end of each day.
For this last wedding Mrs. Emily gave me the job as operations manager. This title included me keeping a checklist the whole week of everything that needed to be done and packed and constantly checking in with people that jobs were completed and assigning people to work on projects. Mrs. Emily gave me this job, because going into this internship, Mrs. Emily knew that I did not want to be a florist and had a larger interest in the planning side of things. This job allowed me to be involved with the florals, but also work on my planning and management side of things which I was very thankful of. At first, telling the older more experienced employees to work on certain jobs and asking them questions was difficult because I was an intern, but they respected me and it was an overall great experience.
Set up for this weekend began on Friday at 9 am packing rental cars with flowers since 50% of the floral arrangements were going to be made on site. Once we arrived at the Four Seasons, we worked on all the large construction projects to get them over with and only have to design the next day. Wedding day was a twelve hour work day doing last minute design projects and finishing the set up. It lasted even longer because we had to do a chair and floral swap after the ceremony and bring everything over to the reception while the guests were at cocktail hour. This saves the bride quite a bit of money and allows her to have some more time with her flowers. It is so crazy to me that a bride and groom barely even notice the decorations because of the craziness and excitement. I am glad she got the most use out of all the florals by using them both for the reception and ceremony. After everything was set up I could not believe how beautiful and magical it looked. I pull Emily aside and asked how she designed everything. I asked because I always feel pressure to be original and have my own ideas, not pull from Pinterest or instagram. Mrs. Emily told me that no design ideas are original, but are original in your own way when you put your spin on it. She had seen some things similar and then thought of how she could add or change it to make it her own. That was definitely good to hear as I continue in the wedding and event planning world, to stop putting so much pressure on myself. The wedding was a huge success and none of us felt stressed because we were so prepared for the week and weekend. I cannot believe this marks the end of my Floriography internship, and am so thankful for Mrs. Emily and everyone who made this possible. I cannot wait for my next opportunity to learn and grow in this industry.
Below are photos from the wedding.