Last October I created this truly inspired and amazing bouquet. It’s my baby, my love, my creation!!! This was to be the third and final bridal bouquet I would be designing for this family. I had been fortunate enough to design for each of the other sisters. I knew the bouquet had to be truly special. The week of the wedding I happened to be in New York. While touring the NYC flower market I found these tiny little succulents which I had been searching for. My bride had hoped to have succulents in her bouquet but my local wholesalers could not provide the smaller varieties. Finding these in NYC was a total miracle. The mini succulents were purchased and placed in my suitcase and lovingly brought home to my bride. When I started the process of designing this bouquet I suffered some type of creative block, probably because I truly wanted it to be more special than anything else I had ever created. I made the bouquet twice that day and it was indeed beautiful but it was missing something, some magic I had hoped to convey. I was disappointed in my work for the first time ever and I made a promise to myself that I would sleep on it and see how I felt in the morning. During the night around 2:am I woke knowing instantly the ingredient I needed to finish my art. I had tuber roses in the cooler and I knew they would most certainly send the bouquet from lovely to extraordinary, I knew intuitively that it would be a masterpiece.

Tonight I received a text from a wedding planner who knows my work by sight. She sent a picture of this very bouquet featured on the pages of a magazine. The text read “isn’t this yours Holly?” I have to say in that moment my knees buckled a little in excitement because I am always so honored and humbled when my work is featured. To see my art celebrated brings me such joy, but she went on to say that no credit had been given to me as the designer. This was a crushing bit of news, one that filled me with a certain sadness. I’m sure that there was an error or oversight on the magazines part, but it still caused a hurt that I can’t even really explain.

Unfortunately this is something that happens commonly to floral designers. I am not quite sure why or how this happens but I would really like to see this practice changed. I would love to see floral designers come together with a code or credit system that protects our art. We need to start honoring our florists. Imagine a wedding, a photo shoot, a table setting, an aisle, an altar without flowers. In almost every wedding that graces the pages of a magazine there are flowers. Flowers are the beauty, the color, the design, and the style of an event.  This is not a job or a game to me, this is my passion my love, my god given talent, and this is my art!! As I mentioned this was not just any bouquet, this was a bouquet that I poured my heart and soul into, one that I personally gathered ingredients for, and one that I lovingly made. The was a Holly bouquet, and the moment I created it I knew it was unique and special. On behalf of floral designers everywhere please do not publish our creations without clearly placing our names by the stems we have so lovingly bound together. No matter how small or insignificant photos of our designs may seem, I can assure you that hours of thought, design, and labor went into each creation. Please give us credit where credit is due.

This image was taken by photographer Kristen Gardner