Behind the Scenes: Our Wedding Week Flower Production Schedule Explained

Even though the wedding is typically just one day, it is a looooong journey from consultation to wedding day. After sometimes more than a year of planning with our couples which includes our initial consultation, creating their proposal, meetings and touch-points, finalizing their designs, ordering their flowers—the wedding week is finally here! From Monday through Friday we’re in full-on production mode so the wedding day (typically Saturdays) runs seamlessly & turns out as perfectly as possible for our deserving clients! When it’s a “wedding week” at The Flower Cottage we know our schedule is going to be all consumed by the upcoming event.

Wedding week

production schedule

While every wedding is different and requires different a schedule—after nearly a decade of designing weddings we’ve found the perfect workflow to fall back so we can remain on schedule and our clients can enjoy the freshest of flowers! We try to complete every possible task that is not flower related before the wedding week begins. This means creating lists and schedules, finalizing our crew’s schedule and staffing, ordering our truck rental, writing tags to label our personal flowers, packing hardwoods and rentals, prepping vases, etc. With a perishable product like flowers, we can only accomplish so much until the week of, when the flowers arrive so you can be sure we maximize every minute! We are so lucky to have our stacked team to help us! And while we still have all of the other tasks that keep the business running like answering emails, holding consultations for future clients, editing and sending proposals, hosting cottage tours and so much more, here is a typical peak into the flower cottage during a wedding week…

Monday

Sarah is busy cleaning and putting away inventory from last weeks events, printing pack lists and prepping inventory for the week ahead! While this prep work varies depending on the incoming wedding this looks like cleaning/prepping/packing inventory that is getting loaded for the wedding and prepping and labeling everything we’re going to design at the cottage. cleaning wax out of vases, counting hundreds of votives, checking batteries, pulling vases, soaking our floral foam, prepping buckets, filling water tubes, replenishing the emergency kit…it's a toooon of prep and we’re so grateful for Sarah who has the BEST attention to detail and puts her heart and soul into this part of the job!

Tuesday

Since all of our flowers are special ordered for each client’s event (we never use flowers from a previous wedding or event) they arrive to our cottage by refrigerated box truck on Tuesday! The majority of the day is spent processing. Processing is when we take the flowers from their delivery state and get them hydrated and prepped for designing. We unbox the flowers, Cloe counts them against our order, checks for quality and color, we strip the leaves and thorns, and hydrate them in buckets of water. Every flower needs to be prepped differently depending on the type!

Wednesday

Lots more organizing and a little designing happens on Wednesdays. We’re usually getting another batch of flowers in on Wednesday to replace anything that wasn’t correct on Tuesdays. There is always a degree of troubleshooting and sourcing that happens the week of the wedding despite every possible preparation we take! It is Mother Nature we’re dealing with and we truly never know how things are going to come in. While this can be a point of stress, we’ve spent years learning how to pivot, building wholesaler and vendor relationships, and learning so that we’re able to handle these situations professsionally and quickly! So after a little processing we hit the ground running with organizing the flowers for designing. We’ll pull all the best of the best for the personal flowers and sort them into labeled vases. Then we’ll pull everything we need for on-site designing such as ceremony arches, installations, signage flowers, etc. and put those into labeled buckets. Next we’ll design any bud vases or arrangements that are in water and tuck them away in the cooler!

Thursday

We continue to design anything that will stay in a vase of water like the bridesmaids bouquets and low centerpieces. We prep anything we possibly can for Fridays designs. Sometimes that looks like greening out high centerpieces, sometimes that will be finishing the altar pieces or pew decor.

Friday

We almost always have high centerpieces in our weddings and Fridays are reserved for those! We’ll complete anything larger that is designed in foam so the flowers stay fresh and hydrated with only one night in the cooler. We’ll also take time to green out any installations such as our hoops or ceremony arches if necessary. Lastly, the most important piece—the bridal bouquet— is designed on Friday! Typically we’ll save any personal flowers like boutonnieres, corsages and crowns for Saturday morning so they’re as fresh as possible. Everything is organized and ready so Saturday when we arrive to load out we know exactly what’s going where.

Phew! It’s a busy week but the energy is unlike anything else as we watch the flowers go from boxes to the beautiful arrangements our clients have been dreaming of for so long! If you’re curious what a Saturday wedding setup looks like after this long week, you can check it out here!