The real reason I love floral design

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I have to admit that one of the reasons why I enjoy my floral design classes is because I love looking at flowers before they are arranged. Yes, it seems opposite of what a floral designer would say, but it's true. My whole life, I've been enamored with the big displays of bunches of flowers in florist shops, grocery stores, and sidewalk flower vendors. Seeing all the flowers grouped by type rolled up in cellophane sleeves waiting to be purchased just makes something inside me leap.


So you can imagine what I must be feeling every time I go in to floral design class and get a chance to open up the large refrigerators that are there to see them filled with flowers recently purchased at the flower mart. I'm in heaven!

Yesterday, all the floral design students had a particularly significant opportunity to go in on a non-class day and assist our instructor with a wedding job she had for this weekend. It wasn't mandatory that we be there--strictly voluntary. Many of us embraced the chance to fine tune our skills that we'd been learning in class by applying them in a real world setting of the mass assembly of corsages, boutonnieres, cake topper pieces, a flower girl basket, carry-pieces for the bride and her bridesmaids, table arrangements, and altar sprays. There's a lot of work that goes into producing so many wedding flower arrangements including the prep work in getting the flowers cleaned up and ready to be arranged. Our classroom was full of helpers as well as the wonderful aroma of flowers (the same aroma that hits you when you walk into a florist).


The classroom fridges had to be emptied of the buckets of flowers used for our classes so there was room for the wedding flowers after they were arranged. Then added to that were the bunches and masses of wedding flowers in buckets waiting to be assembled into the various wedding arrangements. I was loving life!

We all assisted with so many jobs from prepping, to arranging, to sweeping and clean-up. Fortunately, I had brought my camera with me and took a break in the middle of the afternoon to take some photographs of my finished work and also the flowers in their pre-arranged state. I have to say that my favorite photos are of the latter.

I stayed until the lights were being turned out in the evening. My eyes were bleary but my heart was singing because I had been surrounded by so much floral beauty all day long. Don't worry... I'll share my finished arrangements (I've already posted them to my Facebook album). But for now, I wanted to feature shots of the flowers before they were arranged--the sights that made me happy I'm taking these classes.