Why You Shouldn't Get Your Heart Set on a Specific Flower

Caroline Lima Photography

Working with flowers is beautiful and wonderful and life-giving and smells good pretty much all the time. But there are times when flowers can literally make us want to pull our hair out!

If you’re working with a florist who is hesitant to promise a specific flower (or downright will not promise a specific flower at all!), it’s not because they don’t want to provide you with the most perfect, magical day of your life. It’s actually quite the opposite! We do want to provide you with the most perfect, magical day, and most perfect, magical floral design, and that’s exactly why we often will not promise a specific request.

Here’s why:

It may not be in season.

It’s true that the average Jane or Joe doesn’t know too much about flowers, and we totally understand that. We know that you may know what a flower you love looks like, but maybe not it’s name. We also know that you may not know what season said flower is blooming and beautiful. It’s not always easy for us to inform our sweet couples that their flowers may not be in season for their wedding date, but it’s important that we make you aware. Certain flowers simply will not look good or survive in temperatures that are a drastic change from their norm. For instance, peonies are so beautiful in the mild springtime temperatures, but may end up wilting and looking subpar in the summertime heat.

It may be popular during your wedding year.

There are trends in wedding flowers just like there are in wedding decor and styles! Flower farmers simply may not be able to keep up with production of a very popular flower, making it difficult (and costly!) to get for you.

Weather may have affected harvesting.

Weather is something I don’t think florists ever anticipated having to be aware of, but it’s an important aspect to floral design! Droughts, floods and hurricanes, and unseasonably warm or cooler temperatures all play a major role in whether or not we can successfully acquire your flowers. Believe it or not, it also affects the color of your flowers, so even if we’re able to get your favorite, it may not be quite the color we need. While we can give you a pretty good idea if your favorite flower is not in season or tends to be popular right now, weather is definitely not something we can predict several months before your wedding date.

It may just not look good when it arrives.

Sometimes, when it comes down to it, your favorite flower simply just does not look good when it arrives, caused by so many factors out of our control. If something arrives that looks lackluster, you can bet your florist is not going to use it. And you wouldn’t want them to! Just because it’s your favorite flower doesn’t mean it’s going to look beautiful if it arrives wilted or discolored.

Luckily for you, florists are great at making recommendations if your flower is out of season or they don’t anticipate it being available. We’re even able to make quick decisions at the last minute if something unusable arrives or a last-minute decision must be made with our flower farmers and wholesalers.

Trust your florist! We want to make your design meaningful and unique, but we also want to make sure the end result is beautiful and fresh!

Have questions about specific flowers? I’d love to chat with you!