After years of talking about doing it, earlier this fall, I finally attended a floral design workshop.  Don’t get me wrong: I studied floral design in college and while in grad school I was a teaching assistant for the same floral design classes I took as an undergrad, so I’ve REALLY studied floral design.  But […]

I’ve often said that after a wedding or event, the flowers are only six hours older than they were at the start of the event, and they still have a lot of life left in them. As a florist, one of the more painful parts of the event industry is seeing all of our work […]

Part 2: Initial Contact and Narrowing the Search. In the first part of this series, I talked about how to research florists. Now, let’s say you have a handful of florists that you’re interested in working with. What next?  Give the florist a call or shoot them an email to find out a few important […]

About this series.  Your Guide to Wedding Flowers, from a Florist’s Perspective. Most of my clients are doing this for the first time. They’ve never hired a florist for an event, so they’re figuring it out as they go along, relying on internet research as well as the experiences of friends and family. I started […]

What a busy summer!  On top of each weekend’s wedding work, I’ve been meeting with potential 2015 clients to talk about their wedding flowers.  We’re beginning to fully book up for some weekends for next year, which got me to thinking that I could provide some insight as to which weekends typically book up first […]

What better time than Earth Day to explain our sustainable approach to floral design!  I started Pollen specifically to offer an eco-friendly floral design option to couples planning their weddings.  In both our operations and in our sourcing of materials, we operate in as eco-friendly of a way as possible.  It’s been an evolving process, […]

Valentine’s Day.  After 10 years working for others in retail floral, I gotta say, I don’t miss it.  Well, maybe a little.  But we don’t do Valentine’s Day at Pollen.  Just full-service weddings and events. Today, I changed Pollen’s answering machine message to say that we don’t do gift deliveries.  Answering machine, you ask?  Yep, […]

Update 8/6/2013: The workshop is sold out.  To get first dibs next year, “like” Pollen’s Facebook page! We at Pollen are excited to offer for the second time our Client Appreciation Floral Design Workshop, exclusively for past and present Pollen clients!  It’s a chance for us to say “thanks” to our clients and to catch […]

We’re excited to announce that we’ve moved!  Our studio now is located at 2918 N. Milwaukee Avenue, in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood.  Where’s Avondale, you ask?  We’re just north of Logan Square. What’s new at the space?  It’ll be a work in progress.  We have a little yard in back that we’ll be planting up with […]

When I deliver weddings, people are often REALLY relieved when I offer to pin on the corsages and boutonnieres.  It’s become clear that people really aren’t comfortable with this task, and I’ve seen so many strangely and/or precariously pinned boutonnieres, that I’ve decided to provide some tips on how to pin a boutonniere. First, where […]