Like everything else in a world that is not quite post-pandemic, the wedding business is not simply picking up where it left off 15 months ago. How do you assess — and prepare for — the new normal of weddings? Floral Management tackles this and more in the July/August issue focused on wedding and event trends.
Here Come the Brides
It’s not a new problem, but there’s a new word for it: “ghosted.” Brides come to you fishing for prices, but then you never hear from them again, sighs Betty Walton, AIFD, at Daisy & Wish in greater Seattle, a boutique firm providing flowers for weddings, events, and corporate clients. That was the case for Walton, at least, until she began to follow advice from wedding business consultant Alan Berg, CSP.
Berg notes that at the first inquiry, many florists send a template email with an attached brochure and ask the prospective customer to get back in touch to arrange a phone call or meeting.
What’s wrong with the approach? Picture your prospective client on her mobile phone, you have sent your brochure as a PDF, awkward to read on a cell phone. “You’re sending the message, ‘Read this before we can go further,’” says Berg. “It adds friction to the process.”
The best response is to ask her a few questions that are easy to answer, he says. You keep that conversation going, and you ask for a phone call or meeting only after you have earned a little trust.
Once you reach the point of writing the proposal, schedule a Zoom call with the client. If the client is ready to go forward after discussing the proposal, great. If not, you can revise the proposal and schedule another meeting. But there is no need, says Berg, to send the proposal as a document before the client has agreed to it: “What too many florists do is give away a piece of their creativity and expertise before it has been paid for.”
Make Payment Easy
Millennials, of course, are used to doing everything online. And for brides, that includes paying for wedding expenses. But the POS systems employed by most florists are not well equipped to deal with this kind of custom transaction.
The desire to meet that demand started, says Jeanne Ha, AIFD, at Park Florist in Takoma Park, Maryland, using the Square app, not just as a cash register and for credit card processing, but also as a POS system. “It does customer record keeping and all those things,” says Ha.
It also offers payment options for in the store like Apple Pay and Google Pay — popular with customers since the pandemic since a transaction can be completed without touching any surfaces.
Small Is Beautiful
Smaller weddings have been, in many cases, the only option during the pandemic. No doubt whenever and wherever regulations ease, bigger weddings will return. But in the meantime, some florists have discovered that so-called “micro weddings” can be a profitable niche — one that carries with it benefits in terms of lowered stress and creative control.
To be clear, small and cheap are not the same thing, at least where visual impact is concerned. “It’s not like I’m doing $50 bouquets,” says Walton. “These girls are wanting bouquets at $250, $350.” The popularity of outdoor weddings has made opportunity for arches, banked flowers, and other décor that feeds Walton’s Instagram account with an impressive bounty of floral beauty.
Be Your Best, Not Your Most
Here’s one way to approach the post-pandemic wedding business bonanza: Don’t overdo. Pick and choose. And take the opportunity to refine your brand, says Holly Heider Chapple, of Holly Heider Chapple Flowers and Hope Flower Farm in Waterford, Virginia. Chapple is being careful to limit her commitments, keeping an eye on which weddings and events will reward her and her team, not just financially, but with a view to producing the work that can make her the proudest. “My hope is that the impact of the pandemic year will be to put the focus on the symbolism of the wedding and what the marriage means for all the people present,” says Chapple. “I think we’ve all learned that life is very precious. That’s good energy. Let’s make use of it!”
Read more in the July/August issue of Floral Management.
Molly Olson is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.
