We interviewed Kandis Harvey, owner and creative director of Blue Daphne Events & Floral Design, a Morgan Hill, California-based floral designer. She enlightens us with honest responses in hopes to inspire and educate couples as they embark on planning their wedding, especially when they get to the time for hiring a florist. She also lays it down with her opinions on doing your own flowers for your wedding (spoiler alert: not recommended).

EH: What are the most common mistakes brides make when choosing a floral designer?

Kandis: A mistake I often see is that some couples start by setting a budget and then create their floral design based on their own understanding of the limitations of that budget.

But this is where talking to a floral designer early can really help. Having a budget is really important. But if you have an aesthetic in mind, a floral designer can help you get there on that budget. We’ll obviously have to be creative but that’s part of the art of it!

Kandis Harvey, Blue Daphne Events & Floral Design

Sadly, people often compromise on their design because they don't know how to achieve their aesthetic without spending beyond their budget. But, a lot of budget friendly things can easily be achieved by keeping things simple. Often brides will immediately think they don’t have a budget for a floral designer and so rather than consulting one that shares their aesthetic values, they try to do it themselves.

I often see couples picking a florist just because they are known for being cheap. There is this saying: cheap is never great, and great is never cheap. Often the price difference between cheap and great is not that big.

What couples often don’t realize is that picking the least expensive floral designer might actually cost you more in the long run. The most common story is that couples do this mainly because they don’t know how to define what they want. If you can communicate what you want, then the cheapest deal is not going to be your priority.

EH: What are the most important things to look for in finding the right floral designer?

Kandis: Before you even start looking for a floral designer. The best thing you can do is to jump on Pinterest and Instagram and figure out what you like — pin pin pin, like, like, like.

Do it with your partner and start to think about what you like about the aesthetics you’ve pinned or liked. Being able to communicate what you like about a style will help you to ask the right questions and communicate what you’re looking for in your floral design.

Before you speak to a designer, check out their Pinterest and instagram and try to get a sense of their aesthetic. Is it similar to yours? For me, my aesthetic is really natural and organic — like pulled out of the ground and put into a creative and featured space. If you see my work and it speaks to you, that’s a great starting place. Then we can talk about what you like and don’t like. For me to successfully pull off your vision, I need to be able to understand how you see it through your eyes.

Another critical thing is your relationship with your designer. You want to find someone that you can have a good working relationship with, that you feel you can trust and that sees your project beyond the cash — someone that wants to bring your aesthetic to life.

EH: What advice would you give a bride who was considering DIY'ing her flowers?

Kandis: There are cases where this can work but from my experience, I haven’t really seen one of those cases... The reason why is this: When you’re getting married you have so many other things you need to be focusing on the day of your wedding. And so if you’re doing the floral parts of your wedding as well, that’s a lot of additional stress that you don’t want on your plate on such an important day.

Sometimes brides will try to have a friend or family member do it to try to stretch their budget but what they don’t realize is that this can be quite risky and there’s a lot of room for error. If you’re going to DIY your floral, there’s a lot you need to be aware of.

If you have your heart set on DIYing it or having a friends or family do it, you really need them to understand what they are committing to doing. Are they buying the flowers? Are they transporting them? Are they arranging them? Will they be able to manage a flip by themselves or will they need extra help?

It’s often worth doing a planning session with a floral designer even if you are going to DIY your flowers so that you understand what you’re getting yourself into, the things you should and the things you should avoid.

DIYing your own flowers is a larger undertaking than you think. And it’s not something I would ever recommend. There are other things you can DIY. For example: tie your guests’ napkin ribbons, write your own thank you cards, make a heartfelt favor.

But for the love God, please do not do your own flowers on your wedding day. That is the biggest mess. That said, if you are a glutton for punishment and are having an extremely simple, low-key wedding with little decor, then here is what I recommend:

Talk to one of your venue’s recommended florists about your specific desires. They will likely have some insight to what special details you will need to know that are particular to your venue.
You’ll need to purchase tools: rubber floral gloves, shears, snips, foams or pin frogs if you are making fixed arrangements, vessels to hold your arrangements, flower food, preservatives if you are making them more than a day before your event, and a floral fridge with enough space to house everything and held at the proper temperature.
Don’t make your arrangements the day before and definitely not the day of, for these reasons:
- You might run out of flowers or products, and need time to get more, and you can’t if you’re doing this last minute.
- You are going to be extremely busy and stressed our entertaining your friends and family right before your wedding, attending your rehearsal, getting beautiful and lots of other important things.
Get help. Enlist some creative people to help you with this huge task.

Now for what we florists call, “the build phase”:

Start with centerpieces first: prepare all the vessels with foams or pin frogs, and/or fill with water.
Prepare all arrangements with greenery first, spreading the stems out to create a nice even starting point for all your flowers.
If you want all your centerpieces to look the same or similar, divide your product (flowers) to cover all the vessels. I.e., 4 roses, 3 calla lillies, 3 ranunculus, etc.
Then bouquets (I like to use a fat-bottom, narrow neck vase to arrange bouquets in.
Store in floral fridge.

Ready to transport? You’ll want ample space in one or more vehicles, plenty of newspaper to protect everything from falling, spilling or breaking.

That’s it!

EH: Are there any considerations a couple should be aware of with regard to install times for their floral?

Kandis: Yes! Install time is a crucial factor for how we plan floral. If you have to do a flip in with a very short install time, that will add to your budget because it will require a bigger team to make the flip happen in that narrow install time window.

If you’ve got a tight budget for floral, it's fundamental that you work with your planner and with the venue to make sure that the install times and the flip times are sufficient to do the install with the team size that you can afford.

EH: What words of wisdom would you give new brides trying to put together their ideal wedding day?

I just really want to encourage couples to enjoy the process. Think about it like this: you get to create a perfect day that you share with the people you love most in the world.

Now that day is going to be fantastic, but the 365 days before that day can be a lot of fun too! Particularly when you find people you really like working with. So enjoy thinking about it, talking about it, and living it until it happens.

EH: How much time in advance should couples book a floral designer before the wedding?

Kandis: I’d say, as soon as you’ve got your venue, that’s a good time to start reaching out to floral designers because once you’ve booked your venue, you have a better understanding of the direction the design is going to go.

It’s not a bad idea to do this at the same time as you’re looking for your photographer because both of those conversations will inform and improve how you communicate you aesthetic and what your vision is.

Having a sense of how you’ll accent your wedding with flowers will help you communicate your color pallet to your photographer and getting that feedback about what you want to capture with the photographer might help you get a sense of what the details are that are important to you. One way or another you’ll really start to build a vision of what’s important to you.

How important is it to choose a floral designer that is compatible with your personal style?

This is really important. If you choose a designer whose style is completely different than yours, the whole process can be really difficult. That’s not because they don’t want to support you. It’s really just a matter of a designer’s style at their core, who they are — how they see the world.

Every designer designs a specific way. So if you choose someone who shares a similar aesthetic, it’s really easy for them to bring your vision to life. If they don’t share that vision, the process will end up being difficult for everyone.

EH: Do you have any other advice?

Kandis: Once you’ve picked a your perfect team of designers, photographers, caterers and crew, trust them. You’ve done a lot of hard work finding them and making sure they’re the right team for the job. Trust them to make your wedding great!

Bay Area florist answers the tough questions about planning a wedding