What's in your wedding floristry toolkit?
When you’re a wedding florist you’re going to be on site delivering and styling your flowers for the big day. Wedding flowers are the most photographed of all the floral designs we produce and getting them looking good is important. However much you’ve prepared for the wedding day, and have visited the venue beforehand, you never know what surprises you might have on the day. This is why it’s best to be prepared, and every good florist brings a toolkit on site with them to help with any of those little surprises that may arise.
Between us we have decades of wedding experience and lots of stories about things that have gone wrong on wedding days, and how as florists we’ve overcome them. These lessons have led to us making sure that our toolkits are full of all sorts of useful things that may be needed on site.
Here are our essentials:
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Scissors – starting with the obvious you couldn’t go onto site without your snips. I always keep an extra pair in the toolkit in case mine go missing on site or are picked up by one of the team! As well as your snips, make sure you have wire scissors, secateurs and non-floristry scissors for things like fabric ribbons. I also always carry a floristry knife.
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Tapes – it's worth having a range of tapes but the real essentials are stemtex in case you have any last-minute changes needed to buttonholes or wired flowers, and also pot tape.
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Wires – I always throw some wires into my kit. There have been times that the couple have forgotten someone who needs a buttonhole and if I haven’t made a spare before arriving these, along with the tape, can save the day!
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Tea towels / blue roll – when dealing with flowers it’s bound to get messy! I always carry a tea towel to wipe the bottoms of things like bud vases before placing on the linen. I also pack a blue roll for any floor spillages.
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Water jug – it's handy to have a jug with you because you don’t know how far away a water source will be to where you’re working, and if your flowers have got thirsty, vases made need topping up.
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Door wedge – This top tip comes from Elle at the School and it’s proven invaluable for me on several occasions. From being used for its intended purpose to prop open doors as you carry through your flowers, to securing designs on sloped mantelpieces, a door wedge is a life saver for a few reasons.
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Ribbon and string – carrying spare ribbon is essential just in case you have any last-minute requests for buttonholes, or the bridal bouquet ribbon gets damaged. Hopefully this is something you wouldn’t need but having it with you is reassuring. It also helps to carry string/twine, for similar purposes.
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Dustpan and brush – along with the blue roll this is a key one for tidying up before the wedding guests arrive. You can’t rely on a venue to provide you with cleaning tools, so packing this makes it easier.
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Zip ties – these are key if you’re doing larger installations or securing your flowers against an object.
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Floral adhesive tape – on a windy day this can be a gamechanger! It’ll help to secure things in place, and you won’t have to worry about them blowing over mid-ceremony!
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Water tubes – I always pack some spare water tubes; they’re used more on larger installations but in the heat of summer you never know when you may need more.
These are some of the key things that we pack in our toolkit, what have we missed? We’d love to hear what you’d add!