Happy New Year and Congratulations on Your Engagement!
Did you know that nearly 1/3 of marriage proposals for the entire year take place between Thanksgiving and New Year’s?
Whether this winter has you starting the process of planning your own wedding or helping a friend scout out potential vendors, don’t forget to have fun! While planning a wedding can be tedious and stressful at times, it is a time in your life that you will always remember.
To kick-off the start of your planning, please enjoy the interview from the soon to debut www.bridebudget.com with Ebony Lashay Smith, Owner of Floressence Chicago
How many years have you been in business?
Floressence will celebrate it's 8th birthday in March of 2012!
How did you get started in this business?
I started my career in flowers working in traditional retail flower shops and even as an in-house designer for a well-known online flower distribution center. It didn't take me long to discover that my true passion was to find the creativity I craved as a designer by working exclusively as a wedding florist. I started as an intern with a wedding and event design studio to start learning the business and eventually worked my way up to being a senior level designer with some of the top rated wedding floral design and event companies in Chicago.
What makes Floressence different from other wedding florists?
Most wedding floral design companies focus on creating a grand affair and flowers are just one part of the equation that often includes props, lighting design, fabric draping and all sorts of things that are not flowers. I wanted to become a wedding floral designer because of my love for flowers. With Floressence, the flowers come first in my approach to wedding floral design.
Why wedding packages? Don’t Brides want their flowers to be different than everyone else’s?
This is a common misconception and something that I work tirelessly everyday to change. At Floressence, packages refer to the grouping of pieces.
Traditionally, if florists have offered wedding packages it was to get rid of old flowers or dramatically increase their profit margin by offering flowers to the Bride that florists typically get at a deeply discounted rate for ordering in mass quantities like roses. Packages were of a benefit to the florist, not the Bride, so yes in the old days, choosing a wedding package would have meant that your flowers would have been like every other Bride who selected a package. However, the times have changed.
I maintain NO inventory and like a traditional wedding florist, I also order each client's flowers right before the wedding so that every Bride gets the freshest flowers possible.
Your choices have no restrictions. You can have any type of flower you want in any color you want. You can combine your choices and have all the options that you’d be able to find with a traditional wedding florist.
Not only are the flower and color choices customizable, but so are the options. Substitutions and additions to every package are possible, just ask! With Floressence, packages are about saving money, not about lack of choice or creativity.
Why be an online wedding florist vs. having a flower shop?
Years ago, I operated Floressence from a traditional retail storefront with a specialty in wedding flowers. I closed my storefront in 2010, because I felt that doing business on the internet is truly the way the world works today and that is especially true with how people buy flowers. I'm willing to bet that the last time you received or sent flowers you or the person that sent you flowers:
1. Logged onto a website
2. Placed the order based on the descriptions and photos present
3. Paid with a credit card and received an email receipt and confirmation
You also trusted from that moment forward that your order was in good hands. Walking into a flower shop to order flowers is in many ways a thing of the past.
When I moved Floressence to being a virtual business it came from a place of feeling that this model of ordering flowers could also work for weddings, especially for today's Brides who have always lived in a technology forward world.
I thought that many Brides out there would be happy to handle the specifics of their wedding flowers via phone, email and other forms of e-commerce based technology, especially if doing so would save them a lot of time and money. I turned out to be right :-)
What’s the greatest benefit to your clients with being an online based wedding florist?
Because of my online based business model and low overhead, I am able to offer premium wedding floral varieties and designs at a deeply discounted rate. I also have no price minimums and can work with any budget (as long as you're willing to work with me and be open to my suggestions...if your floral budget is super tight)
What is the best part of your day?
I really love hearing "Thank You!" from Brides who were unable to find a florist that didn't have minimum cost guidelines for weddings or that would work within their budget until they met me.
Some Brides I've worked with through the years had given up on having their bouquets professionally done and were considering designing their own wedding flowers until they found my website.
Not every couple has a big budget for their wedding flowers. Some people are not "flower people" and don't envision flowers as a big part of the look of their wedding day but still feel that flowers are important to have on some level.
Not being crazy about having flowers all over the place for your wedding doesn't mean that you don't deserve to have your needs met by an experienced professional. I’m happy and honored to be able to fill that need for the Brides of Chicago.
Why should Brides choose Floressence as their wedding florist?
Floressence is a business that is large enough to serve yet small enough to care. I am not only the business owner, but I am your primary point of contact. By limiting the number of weddings I design during peak wedding season, I am able to keep customer service my top priority. I’ll always only be a cell phone call or email away whether it's your wedding day or months before.
I am also offering a new and innovative concept to Brides when it comes to selecting a wedding florist. While I’m among the first florists in Chicago to operate in this fashion, it’s only a matter of time until this concept becomes more of the rule than the exception.
What's your favorite flower? Tell us one thing that your Bridal clients might be surprised to know about you?
My favorite flower is a tie between yellow roses and white orchids. Though I'm more partial to yellow roses...
I am also a certified yoga instructor. I teach hot yoga, vinyasa yoga and yogalates. If you need to destress from all of your wedding planning, come take my class!