You know that saying "What goes up must come down"? Well it's definitely true in event decor. We spend months planning events, from the wash lighting on the ceiling to the napkin ties. We order linen from Chicago, props from China, and flowers from everywhere just to bring them all together for one night. All week we'll have folks making floral arrangements, cleaning lanterns, scheduling vehicles....the list goes on and on. Then, in a frantic but well choreographed excercise we'll put them all up in several locations in a matter of a few hours. The event will look great, and a "good time will be had by all."
Then what?
Well, after the last dance has been danced and the last drink has been drunk, that decor needs to come down. Pronto. That's when the Tiger Lily Pick-Up Artists take over.
On a typical event night, we'll have one, two, maybe even four vans hitting the road around 10pm. Each driver, or "pick-up artist" will have a list of venues they need to visit and items they need to retrieve.
The pick-up artists, Taylor, Kim, Steve and at times myself have our own "tales from the front" to tell. Let's see, wading into waste deep surf to retrieve a chuppa frame after the tide came up, climbing in the rafters at Wild Dunes at midnight during a hurricane warning, or a real threatening situation: tipsy, frisky bridesmaids after last call! Don't forget about our Charleston ghosts either.
There is a story about a ghost at Middleton Place Plantation. Tiger Lily is the official florist at Middleton Place, and we do a LOT of events there. I might have some of the facts wrong, but the jist of the story is this: During the civil war, the owner of Middleton Place buried his valuables under a giant oak tree while Union General Tecumsuh Sherman conductued his infamous March to the Sea. Mr Middleton told only one person of the location of the treasure, a trusted black servant. Legend has it the Union soldiers threatened to hang the servant if he did not tell them the location of the treasure. The servant did not tell the soldiers, and they indeed hung him from an oak tree, THE oak tree where the treasure was buried! His ghost haunts that tree to this day. Tragic and ironic. Also ironic is that the oak tree is the same oak tree that bridal couples get married under at Middleton.
And there I was at midnight on a cool, windy, moonless night trying to do the pick-up. Now I'm not much for ghosts ,and I didn't actually see anything but I came away a believer of ghosts after that night. I had no flashlight, it's about a 100 yard walk from the van to the tree, and I stumbled over every root inbetween. The noise out there was deafening. Crickets, cicadas, jumping fish, rustling leaves, creaking tree limbs. I think I even heard a couple snakes slithering. Ever hear a snake slither? It's pretty wild. Of course, I may have just imagined that part, but that's where my head was by the time I made it to the tree.
I knew the story of the tree and the trusted servant. I felt the chill down my back, I was waiting for his voice in my ear, his hand on my back. Doing the math, I figured I had a 50-50 chance of making it back to the van that night. Well, it all happened and I survived. But let me tell you, midnight on an ancient plantation, all alone under a haunted oak tree, that's an experience!
Sorry for the rambling there, but this blog is "Behind the Blooms" a behind the scenes look at what we do at Tiger Lily, so there you go.
Back to the pick-ups. After the pick-up artists have gathered all the items and dodged all the bridesmaids, they park and lock the now fully loaded vans back at the shop. On Monday, the first thing we do is unload the vans and start seperating, cleaning and storing all the items. It takes a couple of folks all day Monday to get it done. The top photo is of Brenda sorting rented linen. This stuff needs to be sorted, counted, verified, packed in the large blue shipping bags and sent back to where it came from, in this case Chicago. Brenda found a couple dinner rolls and dessert spoons in this pile!
The bottom photo is of Marisol surrounded by 25 large cylinder vases. Each have to be counted, emptied and painstakingly cleaned before they are stored. We're talking washed, dried, then Windexed. Scraping the melted candle wax from hurricane shades and lantern glass is the toughest job. Each takes about 30 minutes and it's not uncommon to have 20 or more out on a Saturday. That's a long day. We store all of our items cleaned, so that when we need them we can just reach for them and they are ready to go.
So a lot of folks think that they know what we do at Tiger Lily: Stand behind tables and make pretty flowers. We do that, along with scraping wax, sorting linen, climbing rafters, cleaning glass, and dodging ghosts. And bridesmaids.

Labels: bridesmaids, cleaning, ghosts, hurricanes, middleton place, midnight, pick-ups, vans.