We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jacqueline Roche & Kathryn Collis a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jacqueline Roche &, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start big picture – what are some of biggest trends you are seeing in your industry?
A couple of trends we see emerging in recent years for the floral industry are non-traditional florals and large impactful installations.
Over and over again during our initial consultations our clients mention wanting to avoid the traditional, “roundy- moundy” white bouquet. There used to be an expected color palette & style for wedding florals but now clients are mixing it up- we love it! We love when clients come to us with an overall mood they’re going for. We once designed a “Gay Cowboy Goth Disco” wedding featuring a 6 foot floral “cloud” in moody reds, burgundy & purples with touches of black and adorned with disco balls.
We’ve also worked with clients that want the classic/traditional color palette, but make it modern. For one of these clients we used all babysbreath and white roses- but created babysbreath clouds floating over the seated guests and single reflexed roses at all different heights spilling down the tables at the reception. There are a million, beautiful ways to take something classic and give it a modern twist. It keeps us thinking & problem solving. Which, honestly, is a huge part of our job!
Another trend mentioned goes along with the split from tradition- large impactful installation. Clients used to go for 2 classic altar arrangements at the ceremony and now are opting for editorial Photoshoot-esque altars. Picture a full floral “set” surrounding the couple at the ceremony. We LOVE this trend. It allows for so much creativity. For larger floral pieces you really think about color & textures and the overall installation vs. small detail work for personals & centerpieces. The issue with this trend is that it doesn’t fit in the outdated budget guide that many of our customers think of. Back in the day the rule of thumb was that floral should be less than 10% of your overall budget. This was pre-pinterest times where clients would ask for Bouquets, Boutonnieres and centerpieces. It becomes part of our job to educate clients on pricing and what to expect when asking for hanging floral clouds, full floral installations and lush bar designs. Pinterest weddings often show styled-shoots – this is when vendors team up (not a real wedding) to showcase their talents for marketing purposes. They want to show what they can do- therefore these are definitely the “dream” wedding- AKA very expensive! We can and would love to design that for you- but we also don’t want you to break the bank trying to match something you saw on the internet! There is no wrong budget, just YOUR budget! If its getting too expensive- we’ll suggest one high impact installation moment vs. small floral touches everywhere- your guests will remember your lush altar backdrop over the single budvase on the bar.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
Both of us, Katy & Jacqui, started working with florals after college. We started our floral journeys separately and by chance met in New Orleans at a small floral shop in the French Quarter. This shop specialized in everyday designs (birthdays, congratulations, single vased arrangements)
The two of us knew that we wanted to really focus on larger-scale weddings & events and so we teamed up to create Cry Baby Floral. We work out of a studio vs. having a shop for customers to stop by. During the week we answer emails, prep vases & candles, place floral orders, clean buckets (so many buckets!) and go into production mode processing florals and designing. Fridays & Saturdays (with the occasional Sunday) we work on site and weddings creating installations, setting up receptions, etc. Our clients reach out 18months – 6months before their weddings and start the planning process then- so unfortunately we cannot accommodate walk-ins and single orders- a common misconception! We send people in the direction of brick & mortar floral shops for that
When we got into this industry we saw just how much waste is produced by the wedding industry. Many people just think we’re talking about tossing the flowers away after the ceremony- while yes, that is part of is- those flowers can be composted, turned into soil and used to create new flowers. What we’re really talking about is single-use floral foam. Our company is completely foam-free. What this means is that we avoid floral-foam all together. Floral foam has known carcinogens in it- it creates a lot of dust which can be harmful when breathed in. Not only is it harmful to the body- its also terrible for the Earth. Similar to styrofoam- once created it’ll never break down. This foam is used in designs that are see for just a couple of hours and then lives on Earth for the rest of time! There are so many other floral mechanics that can be used to create installations and we’re passionate about finding new ways to design in eco-friendly mechanics. We hope that our customers care as much as we do and that the readers will consider this when choosing their florists.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
When we started off- we did not have any capital saved up to start Cry Baby Floral. We worked at a small floral shop and also at restaurants. I’m not sure I’d 100% recommend this- we worked for a couple of years while we got our business up and running without paying ourselves from the business earnings. After a while, the business started to grow and we had to say goodbye to the floral shop we met in and work solely at the restaurant as a bartender and server- work at Cry Baby during the day and the restaurant by night. We saved up our earnings from Cry Baby until we had enough to start renting a small studio (prior to this we were just working out of my (Jacqui’s) house.) There came a point where the amount of weddings we had booked wouldn’t allow for us to continue our “day” jobs. This is when we (finally) took the leap to quit our other forms of income and rely on Cry Baby to support us. The first paycheck from Cry Baby Floral seeming unreal. For us- it was a huge payoff to start this way. We had saved enough to purchase a work van and even buy a larger studio to work out of. We went on salary and haven’t looked back!
Have you ever had to pivot?
We began Cry Baby Floral in 2019. We had just started to get consistent bookings when everything shut down for the pandemic. COVID-19 was terrifying for the event industry. We didn’t know when it would come back.
For us- luckily we had not invested in much equipment, space, etc. yet. We were operating on very low costs. To keep us motivated in our business and push through- we started doing floral pop-ups around town. New Orleans is so supportive of small businesses and we really have this city to thank for keeping us going. We also teamed up with a local coffee shop, POND Coffee to donate to an in amazing organization here in New Orleans, House of Tulip (provides zero-barrier housing, case management, linkage to care, and community programming to trans and gender nonconforming people in need of a safe place to stay while growing the supply of affordable housing in New Orleans)
Through these pop-ups we started to grow a name for ourselves. I believe we booked a decent amount of weddings from people who knew us from the pop-ups. When the city opened back up to events- many people needed to book new vendors for their rescheduled wedding. We had a pretty open calendar for events and were available. That’s how we had the opportunity to work with such amazing planners, venues, photographers etc. so early on in our journey. Truly the silver-lining to such a dark time.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://crybabyfloral.com
- Instagram: @crybabyfloral
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crybabyfloral
Image Credits
Images 1 -2 : Dark Roux Image 3 : Two Studios Image 4 : Conie Suarez Bravo Image 5 : Ashley Biltz Image 6 : Marquez Fotos Images 7-8 : Xistence Photography