Whew! What a roller-coaster we are on. One day we’re going about our business and almost over night we are social distancing and changing all the plans we thought we had for Spring 2020.
For many of you, that includes postponing your wedding. Let’s just take a moment to recognize the magnitude here.
You’ve been planning this day for months, maybe years. And here you are, almost to the finish line and mere weeks away from ‘I do’ and a flipping pandemic?!
So on top of trying to figure out how you’re going to do your job from home, or losing your job, or having to go into battle as a health care professional and face this down every day (THANK YOU isn’t enough!), you’ve got to scramble and move a wedding.
It’s like you’re the Titanic. The iceberg came out of nowhere and you’ve got to steer this big ass ship around it. And really, you just want to kiss 1997 Leonardo DiCaprio (aka, your fiancé) and move on blissfully with life.
It’s not over yet. But, at this point, you’ve done everything you can to reschedule. You’ve hopefully retained all of your vendors. Now you just wait this thing out until your new date arrives and pray for a vaccine. What do you do in the meantime? We’ve put together a little guide on how to navigate your wedding flowers and COVID-19.
Here are some tips from the florist’s perspective:
COMMUNICATE . Reach out to your florist for a phone or video call if they haven’t already, to discuss the date change. Let them know about any other changes such as vendors, locations, times, etc. Specify if the new date is on a different day of the week and discuss openly if you think this means you’ll have a drastic shift in your guest count.
READ your contract carefully. Ask your florist if you have any questions regarding payments, reductions in totals, cancellation of line items, and fluctuations in flower pricing. Please do not ask for work arounds or exceptions to your contract. Contracts protect both you as the consumer and the business. Florists are notoriously kind and generous people. Please, do not put us in a situation where we have to go against our nature and say no so that we can stay in business.
FOLLOW your florist on social media and watch their posts/stories and updates regarding how COVID-19 is affecting the floral industry. They should be sharing valuable information that will help you to understand the breadth of the situation and allow you to take a wider view when you discuss changes with your florist for the new date.
BE OPEN to your florist’s suggestions when it comes to how to navigate your wedding flowers and COVID-19. He/She may need to adapt your current wedding design plan to the new season and date, as well as the availability of certain flowers. The cut flower industry is taking hard hit from Corona Virus and it isn’t likely to rebound quickly.
BE GENEROUS if you can. Understand that your florist has lost a significant amount of income that he/she was counting on for the first half of the year. This is lost income that we were counting on. We know that many of our couples are in the same boat financially and are grateful that you are still going forward with your wedding in the future. If you can, please consider applying a payment to your outstanding balance, even if it is now not due for several months. (Florists reading this, make sure you are being wise about spending deposits as well!)
BE UNDERSTANDING. This is also our first time trying to navigate your wedding flowers and COVID-19. Also keep in mind the time and money your florist has already put into creating the day of your dreams. He/she has likely written flower recipes, mapped out timelines, and even may have ordered vases and supplies. We are currently using our time to manage our children who are home from school/daycare, scramble to understand and secure government disaster relief to pay our immediate bills, stay relevant on social media, and cry in our dwindling supply of wine just like everyone else.
Please SUPPORT your florist (and all of your vendors) through this time by liking and sharing their posts on social media, encouraging your engaged friends to start the planning process (we are still doing virtual consultations for remaining 2020 and 2021 dates!), and even writing an online review about how they’ve been so far.
I hope you know that we at The Blue Daisy Floral Designs deeply care for our couples. We are absolutely heart broken that you have to wait to be married. To have to postpone the celebration of your love is gut-wrenching. We are absolutely grateful, however, that you have chosen to postpone, not cancel. And we will be with you every step of the way until you finally walk down the aisle. We just ask that you love us back however you can too.
