We were lucky to catch up with Marie Lewis recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Marie thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I have been working as a floral designer for nearly a decade and over the years I have designed countless clean white, soft blush and muted neutral toned weddings. The softer color palettes seemed to be the default for wedding florals and though they are beautiful, they just didn’t resonate with me the way a moodier or more complex color palette does. When I first started dreaming up my business I kept that feeling close at hand. I knew that if I wasn’t seeing my taste represented in the wedding world, surely there had to be other folks out there who felt the same. I decided I wanted my floral business to cater to those who are looking for something outside of the box, something unexpected, something truly unique for their wedding or event florals.
This realization helped spark the concept of Nocturne In Bloom. A nocturne is a work of music or visual art that is inspired by the feelings and imagery of night. My work is very much influenced by the play between shadow and light, like we see in the fine art paintings of the renaissance and Dutch masters. I love a deep rich color palette and an eerie, even haunting, theme.
Over the last 3 years my suspicions have been confirmed and I have connected with so many clients who see my work and feel like the wedding or event they always hoped for, but thought was too strange, is a possibility.
We have done weddings inspired by haunted mansions, marionette puppets, dark forests, Dutch masters paintings, vintage cowboys, and we even have one coming up that will feature mushrooms!
Marie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My first florist job was at a little flower shop in my hometown of Portland, OR. I started off washing buckets and stripping thorns off roses every Saturday, so glamorous! A string of good luck in the first few months of working there offered me an opportunity to jump into a full time design position and I immediately fell deeply in love with flowers. Eventually I moved up into a general manager position and pushed my boss to get us a stall at the local wedding expo. What would be a literal nightmare for me today was an absolute dream come true for me then! I was so enamored with the world of wedding florals, flouncy dresses, glamorous makeup and incredible towering cakes. I couldn’t wait to start booking more weddings for the flower shop.
About 2 years into that job my husband and I moved down to Los Angeles and I was hired at a high end floral studio in Venice. I had to prove my worth over the course of a few months but before my first year was up I had been promoted to one of the lead design positions and studio manager. I learned so much about both floral design and business management during that time. I learned about shape, balance, color and texture along with how to handle accounting software, how to plan out a large flower order, and how to manage a team of other florists.
When the pandemic hit I lost that job and decided that when the flower market opened up again I would try my hand at starting my own business. Over the past 3 years I have built this business from the ground up hand in hand with my business partner/ husband, Solomon. We knew we didn’t want to focus our business on a flower shop model so we decided to try and move toward only handling weddings and events. It took a couple years (and for the pandemic to relax) but we are now solely a wedding and event floral studio.
Some people might see our style as weird or strange, too dark or too out there for a wedding. In fact, we have encountered so many people who simply didn’t think the florals for a conventional American wedding could be anything but white. They’ll say “A haunted mansion theme? Isn’t that kind of dark for a wedding?.” For some folks, sure! And there is a huge pool of talented florists out there who will make their ruffly soft white rose dreams come true.
For others, the idea that weddings have to fall into a specific aesthetic category can be the reason they decided not to have a wedding. We have talked to couples who have said that they almost didn’t have any sort of ceremony or reception until they saw our work and realized that their celebration could look however they wanted it to. Your wedding, your rules!
Flowers are a precious gift, they are often present in the room with us when we are born, when we graduate, have birthdays, when we get married or celebrate anniversaries and they are there when we finally depart this world. They accompany and accentuate momentous occasions in our lives and just as we would choose specific clothes to wear, words to speak or music to play in these moments we should be able to choose whatever flowers we want as a true expression of ourselves.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Being a floral designer is a real career, and ironically I didn’t believe that until I was about 4 years into that career.Even as a kid I didn’t know that “florist” was a profession. I had a friend in elementary school whose mom worked in the floral department at the neighborhood grocery store. I remember thinking to myself “Wow. That is such a cool job but my parents would be so disappointed if I worked at a grocery store my whole life.”
There’s a lot of snobbery that could get unpacked in that statement but at the end of the day I was an 8 year old who didn’t think being a florist was a “real job” and over the last 10 years I have found that many adults hold that same belief. But let me tell you, it’s very real! I make money, I pay taxes, I have business insurance and detailed contracts, I have meetings and a studio space. If that’s not being a true business owner I don’t know what is! I joke that I get paid to play with flowers, but in reality that’s only about 25% of what I actually do as a florist!
Any advice for managing a team?
Treat your people with respect and kindness, pay them fairly and on time, and communicate your expectations of them up front. The wedding and event florist industry is a tricky one when it comes to team building. Because our work is sporadic (sometimes I won’t have a job for several months at a time) and seasonally influenced, most wedding and event florists hire freelance floral designers to help with their events. This means we aren’t necessarily spending every day with each other building up rapport and relationships.
Sometimes we have to work with complete strangers, even entire teams of complete strangers, if our usual freelancers aren’t available. I have found that clearly communicating the expectations of the position you are bringing team members on for is the best way to ensure a smooth and painless production with a small or large team.
Other than that, I say to make sure you pay your people a fair price and pay them on time, which as a business owner means I need to be charging my clients appropriately and keeping them to a payment schedule. It’s not my team’s responsibility to accept lower wages or deferred payment if I haven’t charged the right price for something or if my client hasn’t paid me yet. No matter what, I need to pay them what I owe them when they ask for it. Offering a friendly and warm working environment with lots of yummy snacks and tons of expressions of gratitude for your team doesn’t hurt either!
Contact Info:
- Website: nocturneinbloom.com
- Instagram: @nocturneinbloom
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nocturne-in-bloom
Image Credits
Scott Clark Photo, Gina & Ryan Photography, Ashley Vandervelde Photography.