Funky Christmas Floral Arrangement Fiasco

Flower arrangements light up a room and are a very important part of an event. Without them, a dressed table looks sad… completely bare and boring. If you work with a flower shop to make the arrangements you can only dream about make sure that you can draw or have time to drive to the shop and build exactly what you want. Event planners have to be jacks of trades. You must know the basic etiquette and table setting rules, audio/visual basics and be a master at arts and crafts. It is sometimes difficult to verbally demonstrate exactly what you want out of a flower arrangement. You could say funky fresh and end up with a frilly funeral arrangement. You could say summery and green and end up with daisies and sunflowers. Everyone has a different perception of a flower arrangement and of life in general and what might look eccentric to you looks depressing to someone else. One of the event planners here ordered a flower arrangement for her most high maintenance client. When it was delivered to our offices, it had nothing to do with Christmas at all and looked puny and boring. Naturally, she was upset but used the flower arrangement for her first tasting and ordered another in anticipation of her high maintenance client. She explained to the florist her need for something beautiful, extravagantly high end with a Christmas feel but I was still skeptical. The arrangement was supposed to arrive at 3pm but at 2:30pm we began to get nervous so I went to pick it up. It wasn’t even ready when I got there so I had to wait while they put together yet another floral arrangement with only one hint of red… a single red rose. Once the arrangement was finished I piled it into my car and zoomed back to the office. When I arrived our event planners face dropped in horror. She said it looked like a funeral arrangement, I totally agreed with her and tried to come up with another solution but it was hopeless. The client arrived and echoed our same impression of the arrangement but of course our food was a big hit so all ended well. The next day, our event planner made a stop at the 99 cents store and found some really funky red Christmas balls. She went to the florist with a glass squared vase and they built her ideal Christmas floral arrangement themselves and everyone lived happily ever after. Moral of the story: Sometimes you have to give people a push in the direction you want them to go… and they just might surprise you.

crystal p smith
event solutions
crystal@eventsolutions.com
Southern California Event Planning