February 14th, one of the biggest days on a Florist's calendar. I'm thinking back over the last 30 years of how designs and flowers have changed.
The traditional Valentine gifts are still must-haves such as cute stuffed toys, chocolate hearts and heart-shaped balloons. The Red Rose is still the most requested flower.
Over the last 30 years, I found that preparation is the key, this means working long hours and through the day and night beforehand to make sure that we get the pre-orders done for delivering on time. The shop also needs to be filled with fresh bouquets for the Valentine’s Day rush. We aim to be ready for the early birds, usually 8am with a shop filled with bouquets and roses for you to choose from. There is little time to make the bouquets with the phone ringing off the hook and internet orders constantly through the day.
My first Valentine’s Day I spent the days leading up making bows, cutting ribbons and lace to decorate with, cutting cellophane and wraps to make it a quicker process, writing cards for pre-order deliveries, wrapping plants, chocolates and toys so that it made the day flow quickly and easily. The day before was spent dethorning and taking leaves off roses, then rebundling them back into dozen’s.
My day and week before hasn't changed a lot now, this year I will start at 6am with the flower auction, we do have Roses available but I like to pre-order my roses as I know that I do have them and I don't have stress of having to make sure that I have enough and I can the focus on what else I need to buy. After the auction I head back to the shop with my McDonalds breakfast, strong coffee and maybe an energy drink or two. I start with getting all my flowers and foliage into water so that I can then start the process of dethorning and cutting the roses into fresh tepid water. This year being a Wednesday Valentine’s Day I will try to leave the shop by 5pm, Monday night but will be back on Tuesday morning from 6am so that I can start making hand-tied bouquets, bud vases of roses, gift wrapped single roses with a chocolate heart. I do have all my orders ready for the courier to come in and do her first pickups at 6.30am (I'm not the only florist that has Valentine’s Day deliveries). When she has gone I can give the shop a quick clean up and make sure that everything is looking fresh for the first of the diehard romantic’s.
The day flies by with lots of phone calls and web orders, lots of Cupids popping in and out…