Behind the Blooms
Seashells by the Seashore
Thursday, July 31, 2008

Once in a while during an interview with a potential new floral designer they will say "I've seen and done it all". Their chances of working at Tiger Lily are zero. One thing we've learned after 12 years in the floral biz, is we will never have "seen and done it all".

This bridal bouquet was a surprise, 100% sea shells! We have done a lot of work incorporating shells. We've put shells in arrangements, we've put arrangements in shells. We've made wreaths of shells, supplied shell themed linens and candles and much more. But when this bride requested her bouquet made of ALL shells, well we thought it was brilliant!

Each shell was handwired by several of our College of Charleston student design assistants. We used about 200 shells, so it took awhile. Then Gayla Harvey, our Event Designer at The Sanctuary on Kiawah Island, designed the bouquet considering each shell's shape, texture and tone. Because each shell was wired, the bottom of the bouquet was just a bunch of wires. The wires wouldn't support the entire bouquet and it was "wimpy" to hold. Gayla bulked it up with a secret technique and wrapped it with a double faced satin ribbon.

We loved the finished design, but hoped the bride had worked out her arms for the big day. The bouquet weighed about five pounds!

It's always fun doing something new, and that's what gets us stoked!
Posted by Manny Gonzales
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We Won this Award Last Week
Wednesday, July 9, 2008

So last week we get an email from The Bride's Book Magazine. We won their 2008 "Reader's Choice Award" for Wedding Flower Design. They had over 5,000 folks vote for their favorite wedding professionals, and we were selected! That was a cool surprise.

We've won other awards, and we're always honored and humbled by it. But no doubt, our favorite awards are those voted on by the public. If it's a panel of judges, or a scoring system or something, it's complicated and we wonder just how/why we were chosen (or not). When we receive the majority of votes from the public, it means we're impressing a lot of people. It makes all the hard work, sweating the details and leaps of faith worthwhile.

That's why the Charleston City Paper "Best of Charleston" award means so much to us. We've won "Best Florist in Charleston" for the last 9 years. Again, it's unsolicited votes from the people of Charleston. What greater honor is there?

After our first 2 years in business, we were almost out of business. We were doing everything we were "supposed" to be doing according to the floral industry standards. We discovered that we made Tiger Lily to be just like every other florist...nothing special.

So with our two kids under two years old sleeping upstairs, Clara and I sat down at the kitchen table one night and had a long discussion. Fear and desperation are wonderful motivators! We decided to throw out the rule book, raid our retirement fund, and try again. Succeed or fail, it was going to be on our terms. We banned carnations, mums and plastic vases. We threw out all old flowers instead of trying to "use them up". We treated funerals with the same care as weddings. We told ourselves we were going to be the Best Florist in Charleston, or hang it up.

You can think your business is one thing, you can market it, organize it, work it, envision it, do everything possible to make it something special. But the proof is in the pudding. Six months later the Chas City Paper called to tell us we won our first Best of Charleston Award. I can't tell you how overwhelmed we were. One of our best days ever. Nine consecutive "Best of" awards later, we sweat it out every year. Sometimes folks will say "You probably are used to winning it by now". No way. In fact, every year it's more significant.

Thanks to The Bride's Book for the 2008 Reader's Choice Award. Now how many years in a row can we keep it going?

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Posted by Manny Gonzales
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Featured in Charleston Weddings Magazine
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Charleston Weddings Magazine asked us to come up with a few items for their current Summer 2008 issue. I think we've been in every issue of Charleston Weddings, but we're generally part of a wedding photo shoot or an event planners' ad and don't get our named attached to our work. That's fine, but it's nice to get a shout out, too!

The challenge was to come up with a design that would work as a wedding bouquet, Mother of the Bride's Posie, and groom's boutonierre.

Well we do that everyday! We only had one day to get it together, and fortunately had all this cool stuff on hand. In the beginning we had "designer's block" and couldn't get started. We just couldn't picture how we wanted the bride's bouquet to look. It's funny how tough it is to be inspired without a bride's ideas to start things off. It's kind of like how an oyster's pearl starts with a grain of sand. Without that grain of sand (or the bride's vision) it's difficult to get started.

So instead of thinking about the bride's bouquet, we played around with the mom's posie. That took us about 15 minutes, and everything else fell into place. I love those paper lanterns, the orange pumpkin-like blooms in the bride's bouquet.

Great shots by Leigh Webber, and thanks to Charleston Weddings Magazine for thinking of us.
Posted by Manny Gonzales
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