5 Best Practices for Being an Efficient Wedding Florist
Floral design can be hard work, especially when working with reduced numbers of staff. Although weddings and events may function differently this year, there will still be much floral work. When it comes to production, florists are notorious for being inefficient in their processes. So how can one tighten up their efforts to make sure they can produce the most amount of work in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of help? Read on to learn about five best practices to adopt to make a more productive and efficient floral design routine.
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1. Recipes
Personally, I fought the concept of recipes for a long time because of how much planning it takes to do them correctly. With quantities always changing for wedding and event orders, it can be frustrating to do this advanced planning multiple times, trying to work it out with the least amount of leftover product.
However, the truth about this practice is that all of the planning in the beginning pays off in the end. If all of the designs have a recipe, there is much less standing around, thinking, adding, subtracting, explaining, and compromising when it comes time to produce the work. This saves precious time when there is much work to be done, especially when working alone. Save time and energy in the long-run and do all of the heavy brainwork ahead of time.
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2. Order of Production
This is a habit that I had backward for a long time. We all have a particular order in which we produce each component of a wedding or an event.
Typically, after all of my flowers had been processed, I would start making the flowers-to-wear. Next, I would produce all of the bouquets and the rest of the personal flowers. I would then begin on the odds and ends, things like miscellaneous ceremony décor, cake flowers, etc.
Lastly, I would work on centerpieces large and small. When I looked at the order of these tasks from a different perspective, such as how much by-product is created from each design, it made these processes look out of order. One best practice in my production schedule is what I call “working down.” Working down starts with the largest pieces and anything else that is designed directly in a water source. These designs usually have designers removing lower fragments of greenery and tailoring stems so that there is no floral material below the waterline.
Working down the line like this means there is a lot of excess materials or by-products. By designing any small piece last, such as flowers-to-wear and anything low, shallow, or in flower foam, all of the by-products can be reused. This results in less product gathering, searching, tailoring, and, most of all, less waste. Less product to be purchased means more money in the pocket of the floral designer.
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3. Working in Multiples
One of the most significant setbacks I often see in flower shops when it comes to production is lack of space. The simple idea of space is a critical factor in productivity. Sure, a designer may only need a small workbench when preparing daily orders, but space is essential when it comes to the production of a large wedding or event.
A designer should be able to work on multiple pieces at a time, especially if the recipe is the same. Prepare all of the containers and space them so that they can all be reached without too much traveling. Next, all of the ingredients should be out and accessible so that travel frequency to and from the flower cooler or storage place is reduced. It is crazy how much time is wasted just by walking around. If there are eight centerpieces on a wedding ticket that are all the same, create all eight simultaneously in a fraction of the time it takes to make them piece by piece. The key to this practice is to have enough space to be able to accomplish this time-saving task.
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4. Think Through Transport
When designing scalable pieces, it is important to think about all aspects of the design. This includes preparing, creating, storing, packing, transporting, set-up, and tear down.
Many factors come into play with large-scale designs, and it’s imperative to consider the entire process to make the best use of time. A simple solution for tall centerpieces and showpieces is using a Pillow™. This handy design mechanic allows designers to use 1/3 less product than traditional methods while allowing stems to be in a fresh water source.
More importantly, the designs can be easily removed from the vases and stored in buckets of water, keeping your containers clean and safely in their cartons until arriving at a venue for set-up. This also allows for just a few work vases to produce in multiples and results in faster production. Vessels can be set on tables at the event, filled with water, and the arrangements can be simply dropped back in making packing, transport, and set-up faster, more efficient, and safer.
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5. Working with a Sense of Urgency
The biggest time suck in any flower shop or event florist operation is slow pacing. This comes in the form of making too many trips to the cooler, designing each piece individually, distractions by phones and customers, and many other ways.
It’s amazing what florists can accomplish when put under a little bit of pressure. Many of us have most likely been in the situation where we forgot that the bride added an attendant bouquet, and we must quickly whip one up in the parking lot using extra flowers and stems poached from the centerpieces. This sense of urgency makes floral designers operate at the highest efficiency. What if we worked with a sense of urgency like that all the time? This tip has shaved many hours off of production schedules and is a great mantra to adopt. It is harder than it may seem to do so, but practice makes perfect!
Putting it all Together
Let me put this into a real-life example for you. When traveling across the country to design a destination wedding, one may not have all of the ideal resources at their fingertips like they might have on their home turf. One might also not have as much time due to travel delays, limited working hours, and other hurdles.
Consider a wedding with a floral budget upwards of $22,000, which includes ten attendee bouquets, personal flowers for 17, ceremony décor, cocktail hour floral, reception centerpieces, and 21 elevated arrangements. Can one designer process, produce, pack and transport all of this work in just 2 ½ days alone?
By following these five tips for being productive and efficient, it went off without a hitch! Try these practices and teach them to your staff. You will be surprised just how much more efficiently a floral business can operate.
