Today we are going to talk about something I often see flower friends stressed out at the wholesalers about.  Promising flowers that are difficult or hard to get or are finicky flowers to deal with can often cause stress during the consultation process, the planning process, pickup day and delivery day.  Often that stress can suck the life out of your wedding floral journey. 

The first thing we will discuss is why we shouldn't promise specific flowers.  There are so many things out of a florist's control when it comes to procuring specific flower choices.  Limited availability, weather, transportation issues, bugs, customs issues, pricing fluctuations and so much more can really throw off a wedding if things do not come in as planned especially when a couple is expecting something.  I very plainly explain to my couples that I do not guarantee specific bloom and I explain to them why.  But I do not dwell on what could be proceed as a negative rule- I flip this in a positive manner to the couple.  There can be so much benefit to having the autonomy to pick the best flowers for their wedding, everyday flowers or whatever flower event you are working on.  I will tell my couples about unicorn flowers that without the ability to look for the best flowers possible often would leave limited availability, limited seasonality or potential amazing finds from flower farmers or farms that normally are not often available.  In proposals I put example blooms but label them like that with a notation that things are based on availability and have verbiage surrounding flower choices in my contract.  Another thing I touch on with my couples with difficult color palettes that substitutes can be difficult and that neutrals may need to be brought into the color palette.

Then when you are going to try for your customer or yourself to source difficult blooms.  A couple tips to help try and source hard to find blooms, unicorn flowers are getter pricing in general.  My first tip is to not put all your eggs in one wholesaler basket.  Many wholesalers have different suppliers, farms and even local farms so different wholesalers have access to different sources.  With hard to find options I will often order from two wholesalers to up my chances of getting the product.  I will order 1/2 from one wholesaler and the other 1/2 from another wholesaler.  Or if your wholesaler has an online marketplace like Holex- you can order some from the wholesaler and some from the marketplace.  Auction sites are also a great source for competitive pricing and larger scale viability since many farms feed into the auction site which are often farms that deal in high volume so they offer competitive pricing.  Another strategy I use on almost any wedding week is ordering my rose products direct from rose farms in Equador.  Purchasing as low as 100 roses in possible with some farms.  They are shipt directly to my studio via UPS or FedEx.  The roses are usually fresher in quality as the time from farm to vase is left.  Also some harder to get varieties are easier to source direct from the farms as their direct sales are more financially beneficial to a farm.  My last tips is to make friends with a flower farmer.  Locally grown flowers are often more beautiful, have more hard to find items since many flowers do not ship well and have longer lasting product since the time from farm to vase is cut drastically.

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