Interview with Blush Botanicals

FINE Magazine interviewed Alexandra Wise, the owner of Blush Botanicals, about her wedding day floral tips and tricks.

How long have you been in the floral business?

I’ve owned Blush [Botanicals] for eight years. I didn’t work for anyone prior; I went right into it from finance. I worked at Merrill Lynch before.

How did you go from finance to flowers? That seems like a big jump.

Yeah, that was a huge jump. I knew that I didn’t like my job at Merrill, and I had a friend whose mom dabbled in flowers. She asked us to help with a couple of things, and I really enjoyed it. And I ran the numbers—I didn’t want to just quit my lucrative job at Merrill to sell flowers on a stand or anything—and the numbers looked great, so I knew that if I worked really hard and I was the best at it, I would do really well. I jumped right in, started in a garage, and it grew and grew.

What appealed to you about the flowers? 

It was the creativity. The flowers themselves are amazing, but it was also the opportunity to read people, get to know people, and match an aesthetic to who they are. There is a degree of reading someone’s mind, in what we do. [The client is] kind of looking to [me] to lead the process, and I know that one of the reasons that Blush Botanicals grew so fast is that, prior to this influx of all these new florists, designers here were very used to doing the same thing over and over. I think having someone here that really got to know the client and created or designed something unique according to who they were was needed. It’s not the easiest task, but I really enjoy it. 

So about how many weddings have you done in the last eight years?

Way more than I can count. I honestly don’t think I can assign a number to it, but I will say that we're a little different from our competitors in that we would never take more than one wedding in a day. We only specialize in luxury, so each one of our setups is pretty intense. We give [an] entire week [before the wedding day] dedicated to that particular bride. So, obviously, that puts us at a max of one or two per weekend, so probably not as many as our competitors take on.

We do about 90 percent weddings, and we’re booked pretty much every weekend. We book up about a year in advance. This year we have a pretty amazing opportunity. Brides Magazine does a million dollar giveaway wedding. It’s nationally televised [and] a ten-page spread in their magazine, and they chose us to do [flowers] this year.

I can’t imagine what a million dollar budget for a wedding would look like.

We do a lot of those, actually. We definitely specialize in that pretty upscale niche. It allows us to create different things and fabricate things and do ceiling installations. I wouldn’t call us just a florist because we do so much more than that. At Blush, we do a lot more design, [and] we do a ton of installations. It’s a little more than just, "Hey, I want this centerpiece and deliver it on this day." It’s very detailed. It’s a lot more stressful, but it’s totally worth it because every weekend is different. Every weekend is something to be excited about, and every weekend is a little bit of, "Oh my god, how are we going to pull this off?" But we always do.

Does Blush Botanical specialize in any kind of floral design?

We’re a chameleon, in terms of aesthetic. We don’t have a particular look, but we are certainly known for a lush, full, luxurious look. Even if [someone] wants a tablescape of all candles, we can do it, but we’ll make it really dramatic. and crazy-full of candles. We definitely don’t do anything simple... If no one’s going to walk away saying, "Oh my god, did you see the décor?" then you’re just paying for another something. But if you hire us, you know that when your guests walk into that room, they will be talking about the flowers.

What does wedding event design entail? How do you bring a floral vision to life?

The first step for us is making sure we're a good fit, because we are a luxury brand. So we do that by giving them a questionnaire, we give them some images, we figure out a very rough proposal and we see, "Is this what you were thinking of spending?"

Once that’s out of the way, we don’t have to focus on any of the not-fun stuff like pricing—we can literally just dream together. I usually ask them to bring something that inspires them. It doesn’t have to be flowers. It can be wallpaper or a really cool geode. Then we usually have a second meeting where we hone in [on] the look. 

The next meeting will be a sample meeting, where we create a sample of their tabletop for them so that they can see it all together. [They get to see] the linen and the chairs, and they get the full moment to see their vision come to life. From there, it’s just honing in on the numbers, and then it’s the wedding day.

It’s quite a process, and it’s really a moving process. I wouldn’t say that from first meeting to wedding day, we nailed it from the moment they walked in. There’s a lot of editing, changing, and becoming re-inspired and re-working things. We also have our own in-house fabricator, and he does iron work and wood work, stuff like that. This allows us to really dream up anything out there.

What does he build for you?

Big structures. I weirdly dreamt up this circular archway structure that I’ve never seen done before. We had a bride that wanted something unique. We did that wedding maybe last July, and since then I’ve gotten… gosh, maybe 40 calls from other designers all over the United States asking, "Where’d you get that? How did you do that?"

You’ve got to keep it interesting, and you have to stay on top of the trends. You have to be an innovator if you want to specialize in the luxury market. If you become too monotonous, then there’s someone else that’s going to be crazy inspiring and they'll  book all the weddings.

How do you go about choosing flowers?

Normally when a client comes in and they want to focus on each particular flower, I try to steer them away from that. We’re at the mercy of our season. Sometimes things are here, sometimes they’re not. But if a bride lets us know their overall look, we can match it. It doesn’t matter [the] time of year; we just have to make substitutions. I always tell the bride, "Trust us. Don’t go over each flower, go over the whole aesthetic."

What is the importance of greenery? I’ve been seeing more herbs and succulents in modern bouquets.

That's one of my favorite trends... I think it really lets the flower shine [and] it looks less forced. There’s so much more texture and movement. And there’s a lot more detail that goes into designing foliage because to get an arrangement to look beautiful, it takes seven or eight different kinds of greenery. I blame Pinterest for a lot of it, but I’m a huge fan. I think it’s a nice trend and it’s really respecting the flowers as they are in nature.

Are there any types of flowers that are best for weddings?

I wouldn’t say there’s a best, but I will say that we look for things that are most hearty—things that will look beautiful throughout the evening. [It] becomes tough if flowers are too delicate, like a gardenia—if it’s used in boutonnieres and is touched, it turns a buttery color and then it browns by the end of the night. I wouldn’t steer people away from it because I still think it’s gorgeous, but it is something that we always mention to our clients when they choose something delicate. 

What’s one thing brides should splurge on and one thing brides can save on when it comes to floral design?

A splurge area for what we do would be candlelight. I think it’s underrated, I think people don’t understand how important it is. We are candlelight freaks at Blush Botanical; we’re always putting 25+ candles on each table because it’s so important. When you’re walking in a ballroom and it’s a stark, corporate ballroom, you need to warm it up and make it feel romantic. There’s no point in spending a thousand dollars on a centerpiece if it’s not being seen.

[As for saving,] I know it’s a huge trend to do a high-end linen and then a high-end overlay, so people are spending, say $80 on a linen, and then they’re putting a lace or a sequin over it (that’s an additional $95-$100). I’m a fan of letting the floral be over-the-top on the table and having a clean linen. Not to say that it shouldn’t be a nice linen, it should, but I’m not a fan of the trend of the gaudy overlays that are adding a hundred dollars per table.

What should brides look for when picking flowers/a florist, especially if they have no idea what to expect?

I think she should be looking for anything––any one thing, it doesn’t have to be flowers––but searching for something that inspires her. If it’s a wooden table, that’s fine. We can jump off from there. I think that the two most important things we’re looking for that make our meetings efficient and more fun are if a client a) has a rough idea of their budget, and b) has something that is inspiring them.

Most of our clients have no idea what they want when they come in. They usually know what they don’t like, and we can start from there too. I feel like when they choose a vendor, they should feel like, "Oh, that took a lot off my mind. Check that off the list."

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