Lavender Love

Jordan works as a regional rep for the Young Lavender Living Farm in Mona, Utah, and chose to hold her wedding on their beautiful grounds. Unseasonably awful torrential downpours added some crazy coordinating of umbrellas, and the patio luncheon was moved inside, but the skies lifted now and then and made for some fantastic pictures. I also loved that they gave me permission to cross the road to the fields and harvest a few bushels of fresh lavender to add to the centerpieces! What a beautiful event!



Thanks again to Jordan and Zac for the awesome fun of such a beautiful wedding!

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Where are your flowers from, and when are they cut?

Have you ever stopped to think about the timeline that your wedding flowers face before they end up in your manicured hands on your wedding day? It’s really quite an interesting ride!...and it might explain why so many florists do business the way that they do. Care to take a ride?


Whether you choose roses grown in Mexico, tulips out of Amsterdam, daisies from Washington, or lilies from the coast of California, all your flowers follow a certain route. Growers use regular growing seasons as well as greenhouses to harvest flowers at their best. Most growers at this point are so familiar with their flowers that they’ve cheated Mother Nature and can grow their stock in waves that can be had no matter what time of year you want them. Those flowers are the readily available, standard flowers that you see everywhere…as mentioned…roses, lilies, daisies and more. More unique flowers that may not be used as often, such as lily of the valley, peonies, amaryllis, and hyacinth, don’t have the same year-round schedule. If the flowers you want are rare, you’ll be subject to their regular growing seasons as well as higher prices for their rarity.


Once a flower is cut on the farm, it is taken to the processing plant, gets inspected, is bunched, and is packaged for shipping. Shipping can take a few days depending on the buyers who paid the most to get that wave of flowers…prices at the grower varies too depending on how many wholesalers are buying big numbers of product before it dies in the fields. Delivery also depends on schedules, distances, and truck availability.


Once they arrive at their destination city, the flowers are hauled in to wholesale locations. I personally use two wholesalers local to Salt Lake City, but also know of half a dozen more just in the valley. All of these locations have standing orders of regular flowers that are sold to retail locations and florists on a pretty predictable schedule. The flowers are bought in bulk to keep their prices low and margins high. Some wholesalers also sell to the public, and so have to stock extra flowers for walk-in traffic…the generic as well as some more rare varieties. A good percentage of these products wilt while waiting, hiking prices.


Once the flowers are received in bulk bunches at the retail locations, designers create arrangements that will optimize their use of the flowers they’ve received. Creating about three or four arrangements over and over again also cuts down on work time…which is why you see so many repeats on their shelves. Faster, cheaper, and easier…with a good margin? Now you know how retailers stay in business when they have to pay for coolers, store space, and advertising!


Interesting, right? It's quite a road between the place where they sprout and the bouquet you sniff lovingly on your wedding day. Flowers travel the world, and I love being a step in the voyage.

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

Time Lapse Flower Wedding?

There are a lot of advantages to having a photographer for a husband...amazing portraits of our family, LOTS of job options in different avenues of photos, as well as the fact that he possesses a great eye for color and design which means that his opinion always brings some weight to what I do too. The down side?...millions of pictures of me in the most inopportune moments. I can't count how many pictures I've seen of myself asleep on the couch or that were just supposed to be test shots for his lighting set-up on a fashion shoot, but that he keeps for his own amusement.

Well...a new option on his camera has created an interesting education for both of our jobs...time lapse. I did a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and Jon set up his camera on a 30-second timer and cranked out a time-lapse look at how I work. As you watch, understand that I work into the wee-small hours of the morning making sure that the flowers will be at their peak for delivery times...which means, yes, I'm in my sweats and my hair is pulled up so that I can tumble into bed once everything is in the cooler. Yes, he also shifted the location of the camera at one point, so I apologize for the shots of my behind, and thank you for assuming that, yes, I'm starting to look pregnant...that explains the belly.



Jessica's cute pink and green daisy, rose, and ranunculus wedding was a treat, and there were a couple of highlights! While waiting for the bride at the Salt Lake LDS Temple, some other patron stood looking at the flowers we had brought and asked how we got them green. My husband knows quite a bit about flowers at this point, and started to answer that there actually are a few varieties of flowers that grow naturally green...when I had to stop him and inform them both that those green ranunculus they were discussing were spray painted. Many compliments about how clean and natural they looked followed the disbelief, and that is always great! Also, the bride in front of Jessica carried a similarly sized bouquet, although the stems on her flowers massed together, and I will refer you back to my previous discussions on 'claw hand'. Her colors were similar, although more pale than bright, and she even had similar flower choices to Jessica's bouquet, so it was a great boost to the ego for both of us when the bride in front looked back a little wistfully at Jessica's bouquet and said that she wished her bouquet looked like THAT one. Excellent fun!

I hope you enjoy a little look, not only into the final product on the day of delivery, but at the process of time it takes to repetitively create a cohesive wedding floral spread like Jessica's. A little more understanding about why you hire pro for this part too, eh?...no bride wants to cut into her beauty sleep if she can help it.

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website!

I love getting to share this!

I've said it before, and I'll happily say it again and again...My husband is a fantastic photographer! This morning he posted a new video he's created about his top ten reasons why everyone should consider photography to capture not only major events in their lives like a wedding, but for EVERY reason that changes them. We've had amazing clients ask for photos for all kinds of reasons...to document their classic car passion, the birth of a child, Senior pictures and Quincinieras, even to capturing how beautifully someone stands in the sun before begining chemotherapy treatments for a tumor.

Share the beautiful images with me, and just a tip...grab a tissue first! I have watched it so many times, and still cry through every one.

For more flower fun visit my Florilista website and for more from my hubby see more at www.jonwoodbury.com