The formula for a perfect event is: 

• executing your client’s vision,

• managing your time,

• maintaining a profit, and

• exceeding your client’s expectations!

It may seem unattainable to check all those boxes, but using silk botanicals may be the answer. While your initial instinct may be, “My client will never request I use silk flowers,” that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be using them! With today’s quality and attention to detail, artificial flowers and foliage are more realistic than ever. They deliver the look and feel you need for your clients and remedy a variety of headaches for your business.

Clients get all the product they need and want by considering silk flowers and foliage. Any variety of flower is available even when it’s not in season. The color and style they envision can be achieved no matter where or when the event is held. 

Meet clients’ budgets and exceed their expectations with permanent botanicals. Clients can add decor in areas they may not have the budget for with fresh flowers. The expense of fresh flowers can be cost-prohibitive for clients. By using faux materials in carefully selected pieces that will be located at a further distance, guests won’t even notice they aren’t real. For example, if you consider how much time a guest spends at a doorway, you can achieve the impact of an abundance of flowers without the price tag and labor of fresh stems that will be passed by in seconds. 

Layering fresh and silk flowers can be seamless with today’s available product. To get the best of both worlds, combine silk and fresh. You can create bases for backdrops, arches, and flower walls in permanent, and then add water tubes or floral cages to the base to achieve a personalized look for the client. As unique shapes like hexagons trend, permanent structures save you time and ensure stability and transportability event after event. By building a neutral base of artificial foliage and flowers, these structures can be repurposed. When adding fresh flower insertions, it achieves the goal of the perfect color palette, fragrance, and texture your clients desire. 

“If your client isn’t going to keep the arrangement, like a personal bouquet, you have the opportunity to use permanent pieces,” explains Tom Bowling, AIFD, PFCI. “In areas of the event they’d never carry home, having permanent items available for secondary usage and repurposing means the client benefits, and you are less stressed!”

For designers, using faux flowers and foliage can reduce your labor cost. Working normal business hours, you can pace your designs over the course of days or weeks. Better planning is possible with a non-perishable product. 

In 2022, we are all more aware of the supply chain. The path materials take to get to your door is complex, from the flower fields, distributors, docks, and trucking services. Risks are high for damage and delays, and as a business owner, you can’t do much but hope for lack of disruptions along the way. Consider how you can reduce your anxiety if you use permanent materials. By ordering well in advance, you ensure your supply. On top of this, you’re not reliant on the supply and demand of certain colors or varieties that could send the price of a certain variety through the roof and leave you scouring the globe. In today’s lifelike silk, you can have any flower, regardless of the seasonal harvest.

Vonda LaFever AIFD, CFD, PFCI, speaks from her experience, “If you hear from your supplier, ‘I’m not sure,’ or, ‘I can only get a limited amount of,’…that’s when it’s time to look for silks as a complement or replacement!”

Adding permanent materials gives you more tools in your toolbox. Like a mixed media artist, faux flowers and foliage open you to opportunities to think bigger, better, and get creative. Using a combination of fresh and permanent materials opens up the whole design world for you.

“One of the biggest benefits of adding the permanent flowers to your professional toolbox is the consistency,” summarizes LaFever. “Consistent quality, color, and availability.”

Consider how you can reduce your event anxiety if you use permanent materials. Relieving a variety of stressors, permanent materials solve your most common concerns…and it might just help you sleep better at night when you have a big event coming up!