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?