Sisters & Friendships

This Sunday, Aug. 2, is both Friendship Day and Sisters Day!  We two girls at Brides N Blooms Wholesale & Designs spend so much time together we might as well be sisters! Truth be told though, we ARE friends. Good friends, who work together well. We say, celebrate the day and spend it with your friends and/or sisters. Giving a gift of flowers or something small like candles, candy or jewelry is a lovely gesture to show how important they are in your life.

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Friendships and sisters also play a big part in weddings.  Most brides-to-be choose their sisters and/or sister in laws, future sister in laws and ‘best’ friends to be in the wedding party.  The custom of having female attendants is probably as old as marriage itself and its origins are entangled in folklore. One story is that brides in early England were surrounded with friends and dressed in outfits identical to her own. That would confuse evil spirits that might want to curse her happiness. In another story, bridesmaids escorted the bride to the wedding to protect her from thieves after her dowry. Bridesmaids these days aren’t chosen for protection, of course, but are usually chosen because they are significant people in the bride’s life.  Since they will play a prominent role on a bride’s big day, they should be selected with care.

It seems like a no-brainer to have a sister as your Maid of honor or if you have more than one sister, to have them all in your wedding party.  However, be realistic… Even though they love you, and are there for you in all instances, they may not be up to this particular task. It could be at for one reason or another, right now they are emotionally unable to assist with the details that are required of a Maid of Honor and/or Bridesmaid. So have a care for their feelings too.  If you only have one sister, but her time management skills are lacking, (such as not EVER being ready for anything on time), then maybe a friend would be a better choice.  If you have more than one sister and one of them is better with coordinating things, then she is obviously a better choice for Maid of Honor. However, when deciding these things  be diplomatic. Give each sister or friend a special task that they can do and will make them feel special. Be open to having an honest conversation about what you need and what you expect from your sisters and your friends. Give them the opportunity to politely back out.  Remember, this isn’t about love, respect or closeness, sometimes it’s just about ability and expectations.

Celebrating any event, big or small, be it Friendship day, Sister’s Day or your Wedding day is a perfect opportunity for you to share how much you care about those closest to you in your life.

Now go out and have yourself a friendship and wholesale flower-filled day!

Avoiding a DIY Flower Disaster

We 2 girls love our business. We enjoy floral designing for our clients and getting a chance to bring their vision to life. However, as a company that supplies wholesale flowers as well as doing design work, we have a lot of opportunity to guide our DIY brides and clients with their floral visions as well.

We also read a lot of information about DIY design vs. floral designers/florists. So, when we come across an article that we REALLY enjoy, we like to share the information! If you’ve been reading our blog you’ll know it is rare for us to share directly, and for the sake of you, our dear reader, we think it might be better to give credit where credit is due, and just give you the highlights.

The blog is called How to Avoid DIY Wedding Flowers Disaster, and it is published in Top Wedding Sites by Team Wedding. The author talks about some of the problems that DIYer’s face when putting together their own wedding floral designs. In a nutshell, here are the highlights of the article:

1. Flowers Do Die:  Flowers are living things that need to be handled properly. Without the proper care they might die earlier than necessary. That being said, certain flowers are of hardier stock than others and can tolerate less water, warmer temperatures and too much handling. This is something that should be taken into consideration when making the decision to do your own floral design work.

A perfect example is hydrangea vs. carnations. Hydrangea are beautiful but unpredictable. Sometimes they hold up well and look beautiful for hours and days and other times within hours they look sad and wilted.  Whereas Carnations, no matter what is thrown their way, rarely show the wear. We 2 girls personally think the Carnation gets a bad rap comparatively speaking to the Hydrangea. We never understand why people turn their noses up at this flower. When used in the right design it really is a delicate, lovely bloom that comes in a myriad of colors that Hydrangea will never see, and when put side by side, they can be very similar in design look.

hydrangea  

The moral of the story is, if you’re not sure of the conditions of the day, stick with a flower with a higher tolerance.

2. Flowers Need Water: Like us, flowers need water to survive. Sometime you find a design that you just HAVE to have for your wedding centerpieces, escort or sweetheart table. As a DIYer your resources for instruction are limited to whatever can be found online or in magazines. We have found that those are notoriously sketchy and sometimes difficult to follow. So, if you are looking to have that WOW factor for your floral pieces, the most important thing to remember is, whatever the design, make sure that you have enough water to keep your flowers fresh. We also feel that your designs should last past the big day, and insuring a proper water source will help you achieve that.

candelabra-prep1  candelabra-partyready

So, remember this important lesson if you decide to do your own floral designs,  make sure your flowers are either tolerant of being without a lot of water (orchids and other tropical flowers can survive without being directly in water for short periods of time) and/or provide your flowers with an adequate water source.

Just a small addition to this, when ordering  flowers from Bridesnblooms.com, we will go over the differences of each bloom you might consider and the design work you would like to do with them. We will spend the time to help give our customers all the direction and information needed to make sure your blooms and designs will last as long as possible for your special event and beyond.

Now go out and have yourself a Wholesale Flower-Filled Day!