How to Choose a Florist You Will Love
Updated: 3 days ago
Wedding flowers are among the most expressive elements of an event. They shape the atmosphere, enhance architecture, introduce color and movement, and bring a sense of life to the spaces where memories are made.
Examine the Portfolio
Before reaching out to a florist, spend time exploring their portfolio. Look beyond individual arrangements and consider the body of their work as a whole. Are you drawn to the way they use color? Do you appreciate their approach to scale, texture, and movement? Does their work evoke the atmosphere you imagine for your wedding?
A portfolio offers more than inspiration. It reveals an artist's point of view, aesthetic sensibilities, and creative signature. Look for consistency in the quality of their work, but also notice the individuality of each event. Is there a distinctive point of view? Does each composition feel intentional, or does the work follow a predictable formula?
The goal is not necessarily to find someone who has already created the exact arrangement you envision. It is to find someone whose work you would be delighted to see reflected throughout your own celebration. When an artist's work consistently resonates with you, the foundation for trust is already beginning to take shape.
Read Reviews
A beautiful portfolio tells you what a florist can create, but client reviews offer another important perspective: what it feels like to work with them. Look beyond comments about beautiful flowers. Pay attention to what clients share about communication, professionalism, the planning process, and their experience on the wedding day. Did they feel heard? Were they supported throughout the process? Did the florist interpret their ideas in a way that exceeded their expectations?
Research Business Values and Practices
A florist's work may capture your attention, but their values deserve just as much consideration. What do they stand for? Do their priorities align with the things you value? You can often find a great deal of this information on a business's homepage or About page. Look beyond the finished arrangements and consider the decisions that happen long before the flowers reach your wedding.
At Flowers by Mandy, our values are not an accessory to the business. They are the reason we operate the way we do.
We believe trust should be earned through radical transparency. That means being open about our pricing and our sourcing, giving clients access to the information they need to make a decision that feels right for them.
This conviction is perhaps most evident in our approach to flower sourcing. We work exclusively with pesticide-free flowers grown at local Utah farms, and for every wedding, we can provide a list identifying the farms where the flowers were grown. For us, this is about more than aesthetics or environmental responsibility. It begins with something much more personal: the health and well-being of the people who come into contact with our flowers.
We believe exceptional floral design and responsible sourcing belong together. Wedding flowers are carried close to the body, held against wedding dresses, placed on dining tables, and enjoyed up close throughout a celebration. They become part of the environment we create for people we care about. We believe those people deserve consideration in how their flowers are grown.
With a growing body of research documenting the health risks associated with pesticide exposure, the way our flowers are grown is anything but incidental. We want to know how our flowers were grown, stand behind those practices, and offer our clients the confidence that comes from knowing we have made a deliberate effort to reduce unnecessary pesticide exposure.
Our responsibility also extends to the people who grow our flowers. The farmers behind them are not simply suppliers. They are skilled agricultural professionals who devote their work to understanding soil health, crop science, and ecological stewardship.
The conventional international flower supply chain can involve an extraordinary number of farms, exporters, importers, wholesalers, and transportation networks before a bloom ever reaches a florist. We want something different. We want our sourcing decisions to support the kind of agriculture we believe should exist: one that respects the land, protects the people working it, and recognizes that the beauty of a flower should never come at the expense of those responsible for growing it.
An equally important consideration is whether a business is an inclusive and welcoming space for everyone. We believe everyone deserves to feel celebrated and completely at ease. Inclusivity is not a special accommodation or an exception to the way we do business. It is simply how we believe people should be treated. Flowers by Mandy actively welcomes people of all races, cultures, genders, sexual orientations, and abilities.
Every florist approaches their business differently, and there is no single philosophy that will resonate with everyone. What matters is finding a business whose practices reflect the things you believe are important. Your wedding is an expression of your values as much as your personal aesthetic, and the professionals you invite into that experience should be people whose priorities you feel good supporting.
Trust the Artist to Create Beautiful Art
Once you’ve found a florist whose work, reputation, and values resonate with you, the next step is perhaps the most important: trusting the artistic experience you’ve chosen.
A thoughtfully composed arrangement is not simply a collection of beautiful flowers placed in a vessel. It reflects years spent developing an eye for color, proportion, texture, and form. It also requires a deep understanding of the flowers themselves - how each variety responds to water, temperature, airflow, and the structural considerations that allow an arrangement to hold its shape. Every stem has its own characteristics, and knowing how to work with them is part of what makes a composition feel effortless.
When you commission a floral designer, you are investing in more than the flowers or the hours required to arrange them. You are investing in the artistic perspective and technical knowledge that transform beautiful materials into something meaningful.
Of course, a successful creative partnership still begins with communication. The best collaborations often start with just a few thoughtful ideas: a color palette, a particular mood, a handful of favorite references, or a general feeling you hope to create. These give your designer a sense of direction without prescribing every detail. From there, an artist needs room to interpret.
That freedom is often where the magic happens. An experienced designer develops an almost intuitive understanding of three-dimensional space. They notice when something feels unbalanced, when a composition needs more movement, or when a small adjustment could change the entire atmosphere of a room.
That instinct extends beyond the flowers themselves. Mandy can walk into a wedding space and immediately recognize that the ceremony aisle isn't centered. More than once, she has found herself personally repositioning rows of chairs so the aisle aligns beautifully with the ceremony backdrop. It's a seemingly small detail, but one that makes an enormous difference in the overall composition and in the photographs. That instinctive ability to see how everything works together is part of what you are hiring an artist to bring to your wedding.
A Final Consideration: Leave Room to Enjoy Your Wedding
Your wedding day should be a celebration you get to experience, not an event you spend managing from behind the scenes. Hiring a wedding coordinator or planner allows you, your partner, and your families to be fully present rather than keeping track of deliveries, timelines, and logistics.
Your vendors appreciate having someone dedicated to coordinating the day too. In our experience, weddings where the couple and their families are free to simply enjoy themselves have a very different energy. Everyone gets to be a guest at the celebration, including you.
Photographer: Coley Cook Photography
Videography: Emy Videography
Florals: Flowers by Mandy
Dress: Bell Tower Bridal
Venue: Journey Farm
Couple: Raquel and Bridger Lytle
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