Outstanding Outdoor Wedding Flowers!

Preparing outdoor wedding flowers for Saturday begins like any other week: You take delivery on a Tuesday and right away, the clock begins ticking, counting down the optimum freshness of your blooms. Time management is critical to vase life, and the unique demands of outdoor weddings complicate your task. Presenting fresh, vibrant flowers on Saturday depends on using tools and talent wisely. 

That’s the table-setting opening for a recent Florists’ Review Article Floralife® wrote entitled, “Make Your Outdoor Wedding Flowers Truly Outstanding!”  In it, we describe all the factors that go into preparing flowers for a successful showing out-of-doors. Some aspects will be entirely familiar to the wedding flower professional; some will be unique to outdoor situations. Let’s briefly summarize, shall we?

The Elements: How will sun, wind and heat affect arrangements, and what can florists do about it?

Flower Selection: Simply put, some varieties are better suited for outdoor than others. Florists can try to steer brides toward a hardier selection, but they may have to make do – then what?

Ethylene: It’s the culprit in many floral maladies. And it’s one more hazard florists don’t need as they plan an outdoor wedding. Pro tip: use EthylBloc™!

Flower Food: Floral pros know many tricks to get their blooms to the correct stage of openness on the big day. But we say the best “trick” is proper hydration with flower food!

Fillers and Greens: Hardy, yes. Indestructible? No. Greens and fillers need love, too!

Storage: Proper temperature and humidity, spacing, and ventilation are key. Give blooms room to breathe, and help prevent mold growth and botrytis.

On the Big Day… It’s showtime, but of course florists are still hard at work. Bringing out the arrangements at just the right time (not too much exposure), hydrating often, and using plenty of finishing spray is the order of the day!

As we say in our conclusion, “The choices you make and the tools you use will determine your flowers’ successful performance.” As always, Floralife® is here to provide those tools that allow florists to make smart choices and let their talent shine!

Be sure to check out the original article in Florists’ Review or a handy PDF here.