A Wedding Florist's Perspective: Le Petit Gardenia

Alison Franchi of Le Petit Gardenia is incredibly talented. I once had a bunch of left over sticks from the escort card display that I didn't want to get rid of but did not know what to do with. I gave them to Alison and she utilized them in the awesome display that she created for the cake table. I would never have thought to do that! Alison can do traditional wedding flowers, but really shines when she is given the liberty to do more avant garde stuff like the yellow and orange canvas she did for a wedding of mine at Marvimon. Enjoy her answers!

Q. Who are you and what makes you fabulous?

- I am floral designer / artist working in my field for eleven years.

- I run an amazing floral company in Los Angeles. Travel to oversee/create projects as well.

- I have a great sense of humor and adapt to all personalities.

- I Love to push the envelope and think out side of the box.

Q. What is it like working a wedding without a wedding coordinator?

Planners make my life so much easier and the entire process less stressful on all accounts. They know the business so it makes work move smoothly and efficiently during the whole planning process. I find working without a professional planner has been a bit chaotic as so many things change the day of and weeks leading into the wedding/event we are not informed of. We are one of many vendors that day and with out a planner we really do not know what's to come about until a few days before and sometime when we get to the venue. Planners make it possible to tweak things and organize the day so all runs well and orderly.

Q. What makes a coordinator good?

-Staying in constant communication with the client and vendors.

- Having good social skills and organization.

- I think a coordinator needs a creative edge as well to fully understand the vision and have the right vendors to execute it in a friendly/professional manner.

Q. Do you have any funny wedding stories?

We had a bride and groom that wanted us to dance with them on their wedding day. We smiled and joined in for just a second. :) We can not forget it is a celebration and when the client is that open they usually are extremely happy with the work and staff. It's a great way to show appreciation.

A day in the life of a florist

My last blog post only covered the three hours I spent helping my florist friend Alison Franchi of Le Petit Gardenia strip flowers, but I asked her to give an idea of what it took on her end to create those amazing centerpieces!

Hey Amber,

You caught me at the perfect time on this question and to be honest I am so happy you wanted to inquire about what goes into the day and life of a floral design firm.

First, I would like to say this job is 100% a LABOR of love. The time invested in design, making the client happy, and keeping perishable flowers alive is extremely time consuming. The difference between our companies and other is that each event, design, wedding is unique and one of a kind. Therefore, we spend countless hours thinking of a design, purchasing product, experimenting, and then once the client is happy with a sample, executing it.

Here is the labor aka not so glamorous part: We head to the market around 4:00 - 5:00 AM to get out fresh pick to begin the flower process. Then we start the process of hydrating and giving the flowers nutrients to stay alive and strong for an event. Then we move on to stripping flowers. We can spend two to three solid days cleaning flowers. Ohh, the roses are brutal as they come with hundreds of prickly thorns that easily end up in our delicate fingers and palms before the design process! The purpose of cleaning the flowers is to make it easier on us designers and quicker for getting the arrangements done. After the flowers are clean we go in and re clean the buckets because when flowers sit in a dirty bucket bacteria grows and affects the life span if the flower. When I sell an event, I sell quality as well as beauty. I always want the best flowers as my clients are giving these as gifts and they should be enjoyed as long as possible. The wedding I did last Saturday took us months of planning and countless hours to create.

When you are working with flowers, the production can only be done one to two days in advance. This particular wedding took six people cleaning flowers for a total of 18 hours, three designers working on ten centerpieces for a total of 11 hours, and five people on set up (starting our day at 6am). At this particular wedding, once we got to the venue my crew spent three hours pulling the hydrangea out of the arrangements and re hydrating them because they were sucking all of the water out of the oasis and the flowers were wilting! We had to take each hydrangea out, cut the stem, put it in water for a while, then put it back into the centerpiece.Whew!

It's a science to know how each flower reacts in certain environments and we have to produce a top notch product. After set up, the crew takes a break until the event/wedding ends and goes back in usually at midnight or later to strike. One to three vans and four to eight people are needed to break down as at his time of night everyone is exhausted and the venue staff want to go home. It's a crazy, tiresome process but to watch the faces of the guest as they entire a room transformed by beauty for the night is worth all the sweat and pain of the floral labor of love. We have never had a unsatisfied client!

Playing with Flowers

I'd say a good 85% of my job consists of me sitting at my computer with my cats walking across my keyboard, music playing (right now it's the Best of Motown), and my fingers furiously typing as I plan weddings for my wonderful clients. If I don't stop myself, I'll work around the clock, so to stay inspired on the days that I don't have meetings, I plan "playdates" with some of my friends that work in the wedding industry. Last Thursday I went and helped Alison, the talented florist and artist of Le Petit Gardenia prep for a huge wedding she had on Saturday. It was great--I got to play with flowers and do something with my hands, she got an extra bit of help, and we got to catch up and bounce business ideas off of each other. I showed up at her studio to find buckets and buckets of flowers waiting to be stripped and prepped. If you have never worked with flowers, you can't imagine just how much time goes in to getting the flowers ready for arranging! The flowers have to be taken out of one bucket, unpackaged, all leaves and greenery stripped off by hand, the ends trimmed, then the flowers put into a new bucket with fresh water. And that's just the regular flowers. Roses are an entirely different story. They are monsters--along with the process I just mentioned: every single thorn has to be shaved off with a knife. The thorns that have not already embedded themselves into your hands, that is....

In the two hours I worked with Alison I only got through 20 bunches of tulips and 3 bunches of evil roses. I'm sure she and her staff worked late into the night and spent all day on Friday arranging.

I should have taken pictures of those countless buckets of flowers, because they turned into THIS:


WOW! Alison said that the bride was so happy with everything that she almost cried. The wedding and reception was held at the Valley Hunt Club in Pasadena.