We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ray Roselia. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ray below.
Ray, appreciate you joining us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.
My family experienced a whirlwind of changes over the past handful of years – I became a mom & welcomed my son into the world in 2019, and then the pandemic immediately turned our lives upside down. Faced with some difficult decisions, we decided to take a big risk… my partner quit his job of 10 years to be a full time stay home dad, while I decided to grow my part time business into a full time endeavor. We sold our house & uprooted our life to move to a metro area where I would have more opportunities in the industry, bought a house with a large space that we converted into a studio, and hoped for the best! It was a scary risk to take, but ultimately has paid off ten fold – the flexibility we have in our lives, the time we get to spend with our son, and the creative opportunities I have had have made all the stress worth it. Being able to do what I love to provide for my family has been my proudest accomplishment. It’s exciting to see what you’re capable of when you push yourself to do something scary – sometimes you just have to take the jump!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I’m Ray, the owner & creative behind Rose Botanical. I specialize in floral artistry, event design, decor rentals, & installations for weddings, events, & brands.
I take an artistic approach to my work, and enjoy using unique blooms, materials, textiles, & objects to create pieces that wow. While I have a signature style, I strive to create work that is custom to each one of my clients – I enjoy getting to know each client, hearing their vision, & designing something that feels totally unique & personal to them. My favorite part of what we offer is large scale installations – using flowers, textiles, disco balls (you name it!) to create a one of a kind setting that totally transforms your venue.
I’m a big believer that flowers & decor are meant to be experienced – I aim to create work that invokes feeling & transports you to another place or time. Over the years I’ve learned the importance of staying true to myself and what I’m passionate about, and I always aim to bring my own unique perspective to my designs & create work that feels original and exciting. There’s a little bit of me in everything I make. One of the things I love hearing most from people in the industry is “I always recognize your work when I see it”. My brand has grown & evolved over the years, but I’m proud to have found my own little niche in the industry, and really enjoy working with clients who want to get creative & trust me to create something unique for them.
Pretty early on I knew I wanted to do something creative, and I wanted to run my own business. I remember doing a project in high school creating a mock business – a coffee shop / pottery studio was my dream at the time. I ended up getting into the floral industry in college – on a whim I signed up for a floral design class to fill a credit. The class took a very traditional approach & lacked the creativity I was craving, but it did open my eyes up to the possibility of a career in the floral industry. I got a job working at a local flower shop, and from there moved on to doing freelance wedding design work. I was so intrigued by the wedding industry- all the over the top arrangements, the variety, and the hustle & bustle of wedding days were so exciting to me.
Something I quickly picked up on was how stuffy the floral industry could be, and how traditional so many weddings were – I felt there was so much room for creativity, and that people wanted more designers with a modern, creative approach.
The first wedding I designed myself was my own in 2012 – wildflowers in bright colors. It was exciting to have the opportunity to create something myself from start to finish, & I quickly fell in love with the idea of operating my own floral design business & designing weddings. In 2013 a friend was planning a wedding & asked me to design the flowers. I decided to take the leap & start a business! From the start I aimed to take an artistic approach, and create things I was excited about & that felt fresh, whimsical, & unique. I began curating a rental collection of vintage decor pieces I had collected, that I slowly kept building up over time. I spent my first couple years designing my friends’ weddings, honing my style & technique and getting a feel for the industry.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
I struggled over the years to know how to market myself in the wedding industry – for a long time I never quite knew how I fit in. I started out marketing my work as “whimsical wildflower designs”, but soon began to feel pressure to be more polished, more traditional, to try to appeal to more clients. Part of it was the struggle of starting a business so young (I was early 20’s at the time) – I was afraid people wouldn’t take me seriously, that I wouldn’t appeal to enough clients. As a result, I felt like my work became more generic & less creative. I started to feel major burnout because I was no longer excited about what I was creating. I was struggling to grow my business – by trying to appeal to everyone, I was losing what set me apart and made people excited to hire me. Gaining clients became more of a numbers game – who has the bottom dollar.
I quickly realized that if I wanted to grow and if I wanted to keep enjoying what I was doing, I needed to be true to myself. I took a bit of a marketing risk & decided to just be unapologetically me. I weeded through my portfolio, only shared work that I was excited about, and learned the power of saying no to work that didn’t feel like a good fit for me. I let myself explore the ideas that I had deemed too ‘weird’ in the past (brass animals as a rental item! unusual color palettes! retro vibes!) and quickly realized by the response that this was what people wanted to see!
I think learning the importance of finding your niche in any industry is the key to success, but especially in a creative field. There’s a lot of pressure especially in the wedding industry to be professional, be polished, not mess with tradition – but I’ve learned that being true to myself and finding the people who appreciate my approach has been the key to growing to where I’m at now.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
When I first started out social media wasn’t as far reaching as it is now, so it was a learning curve for me over the years as it grew. I quickly learned that Instagram was my best avenue for finding an audience – this was where my creative, aesthetic enjoying idea clients were at.
The biggest lesson I learned about growing an audience was to be authentic – sharing content just for the sake of sharing content will come across as disingenuous & unexciting. If I’m bored with what I’m sharing, my audience will be bored too. Sharing work that I am actually excited about is going to translate through & make my audience excited too. Quality over quantity is my approach – there’s a lot of pressure to be active on social media 24/7, posting multiple times a day, etc. I try to share when I have something exciting I want to share, and not share just because the algorithm says I should. This has been beneficial in growing my audience, as well as protecting my metal health.
Social media has also been invaluable as a tool to make real life connections! It was a way for me to get my foot in the door in the industry and get to know other creatives, photographers, vendors, venues, etc. I think again that it’s important to be genuine – genuine interactions have so much more value than spammy comments & the ‘follow for follow’ mentality. Use social media as your tool to seek out likeminded people in your industry & make connections! So many industry friends & people who I’ve collaborated over the years with were met through social media. 
Contact Info:
- Website: rosebotanical.com
- Instagram: @rosebotanical
Image Credits
Clewell Photography, Hannah Nicole Photography, Coral Mia, Sarah Ascanio