It’s a common misconception that working with flowers requires lots of space, money and years of floristry training. In this post Academy Tutor, Floral and Wedding Stylist Dee McMeeking dispels some of the common myths about working with flowers.
If you dream of a career as a wedding floral designer or you would love to add floral styling to your wedding business don’t let these doubts hold you back from getting started!
It will take me ages to get to a standard that I can do flowers for someone’s wedding – right?
Wrong! You need to know the basics to get started. You need to know how to buy flowers wholesale, how to treat them and handle them when they arrive at your door, and then you need to know the basics of flower arranging and the tools to use. Add a pinch of creativity, a touch of your own design ideas and you are well on your way to creating for a client.
Just ask any of our students who attended our last wedding flower and styling workshop earlier this year and they will tell you! So many of them walked in scared and had never touched a flower before, they didn’t know a daisy from a dandelion, but they left having created amazing floral arrangements, learnt the basics hands-on over two days and wow where they have taken their businesses to already is amazing! So you need a quick start and you are up and running. We can help you learn the basics and get floral business savvy with our Diploma in Floral and Event Styling. And watch this space for a new Certificate in Floral Design on its way for early 2019. The only thing you will need is to take some time to practise to improve, but that’s fun anyway!
I need lots of space to work with flowers so I can’t get started from home.
Yes you can! Here is what you need – space to have several containers or buckets of flowers standing for 24 – 48 hours, these could be under a table and on the table top, in a garage, in a garden shed. For smaller weddings, you don’t need a big space at all. And you need a table to work on when creating arrangements. I can do a full-on wedding for 100 guests with huge table centrepieces in 225 square feet of storage space, and that is the truth. And that would be with about 1000 stems of flowers! A standard smaller wedding is about half of that so you could easily do that in 125 square feet.
Flowers are really expensive.
Not when you buy them wholesale. Yes like any commodity there are more expensive varieties and cheaper varieties but in general, you would be surprised at the wholesale costs, they are cheaper than you think. With a business set up, you can then arrange to buy from wholesalers at trade prices.
I don’t live near a flower market so I can’t buy flowers.
Ever hear of this little thing called online shopping? Well it exists in the flower world too! I live in the middle of the countryside and have all of my flowers delivered to my door direct from Holland and my UK wholesalers, sometimes they are there at 4am before I’m even awake! You order online and they come to you. I can even order direct from suppliers in Columbia, Ecuador and Kenya from my laptop. There is generally a minimum order but this varies from supplier to supplier.
I don’t know the names of the flowers or anything technical about them so I can’t be a floral designer!
Don’t panic! Most florists don’t remember the names of all of the different varieties of flowers available and how could they – there are thousands of them out there! But there are floral apps out there that you can download on your phone that tell you the names of the flowers, when they are in season, whether they are scented, their correct name, their family name, and even have a picture for you to look at to identify them. Armed with that – you can be a floral designer! The more you work with flowers the more you learn and the more names you remember. As long as you have a photo of what you are looking for you will be able to find it via an app or online.
If you’d like to find out more about our floral design training courses click on your nearest regional Academy campus below!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dee has trained with the UK Academy of Wedding & Event Planning and she is now a fully trained wedding planner, wedding stylist, & floral designer, and has worked on over 250 weddings since graduating. Alongside her company Dee McMeeking she is now an Academy Tutor on the Diploma in Floral & Event Styling and Certificate in Wedding Styling.
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