Weddingbee Blog

It was time to talk to a real bride that had real success with a florist. So I asked my one married friend for the name of the florist she used 7 years earlier. In the week between Christmas and New Years, Martha at Ashland-Addison squeezed me in for an hour long appointment at their main space in Chicago’s warehouse district. The place was buzzing with last minute orders for New Year’s parties, but Martha acted like there was nothing more important to her than meeting with me and my tiny budget. Again, I sat down with my floral inspiration boards and walked her through our vision of whimsical personal flowers and big red balloons lining the outer aisle of the ceremony.

She didn’t just stop at asking questions about flowers, instead she wanted to know about the whole wedding - What did my dress look like? What about the guys’ tuxes? How old was the flower girl? Is our family full of huggers? If so, the Baconator would need a heartier flower to withstand all those embraces.

Ranunculus and Fiddlehead Fern BoutonniereImage via Calie Rose / Flowers by Calie Rose / Photo by Heather Bliss

Her ideas are definitely going to shape what our wedding looks like and I love it. For example, since our flower girl is a total princess and girly girl, she will be wielding a flower wand and waving it as she walks down the aisle instead of tossing petals. Of course, there will be a flower tiara to match.

We’ll even be having balloons with a small LED light hidden inside so that you won’t notice the lights during the ceremony, but as the sun sets and guests head back upstairs for dancing, they will be glowing orbs. She solved our balloon problem and lighting problem in one go! The icing on the cake was definitely her building the whole proposal in front of my eyes with awesome florist software that enabled her to just plug in the number of stems of a certainly flower and instantly get the cost. It was like a pretty floral package present. I’ve seriously never been so excited about software in my life. But she was able to put together a proposal, tweak it stem by stem and the budget just updated. It was flower magic.

Image via Times Union / Flowers by 1-800-flowers

I was able to walk out of the meeting with a final proposal, so over the next couple of weeks we made tweaks and by mid-January, I signed a contract! I’m still waiting from a response from those other guys…

Did you florist help you come up with even better ideas? What made you know that they were the right one for you?