Bouquet blues
Do you plan to buy flowers as a Mother's Day present next month?
If so, you might want to get your orders in a little earlier than usual this year.
Along with Mother's Day on May 9, area florists also will fill orders for six local high school proms that weekend.
As if that weekend were not busy enough, the pandemic has also driven flower prices higher than usual for this time of year and has even limited how florists can get their flowers.
Ed Bloom, owner of Bortmas, The Butler Florist, explained that many florists get their flowers from out of the country, typically South America. But the pandemic has reduced air travel into the United States, restricting which flowers are available this season.
“Unfortunately, we're probably going to be turning away an amount of corsage work,” Bloom said. “Products are tight. I've never seen flower prices up this high already.”
Bloom said the second weekend of May always is the busiest time of the year for florists, with Mother's Day and high school proms almost always overlapping.
Even in a typical year, the weeks leading up to that weekend are busy.This year, Butler, Mars, Karns City, Slippery Rock and Knoch high schools all have their proms scheduled May 7, while Moniteau's is scheduled May 8 and Mother's Day is May 9. That hectic weekend causes a work crunch for florists every year.Several local florists said they work around the clock, hire extra help and even lean on family members just to get through the week.“Husbands help, son-in-laws, grandchildren: we get everybody,” said Marjorie Hillwig, co-owner of Hillwig's Flower Corner in Chicora. “We'll have two vans delivering all day Thursday, Friday and Saturday for Mother's Day, and there's always a funeral thrown in there as well.”Hillwig said they have filled as many as 80 prom orders in past years on top of everything else they do for Mother's Day. She said they never have turned someone away because they do not have enough flowers, but they have turned people away because there was not enough manpower.“On Friday, we have all the corsages picked up, and then we switch right into Mother's Day mode,” Hillwig said.
Every flower shop owner said prom orders start coming in around the beginning of April each year, and it can take a lot of work hours to fulfill them all.“Flowers have to be processed,” Bloom explained. “They don't just come out of the box ready.”Jeff Double, owner of All About Reclaimed, said he hires additional help every year specifically to fill prom orders.“We bring in extra staff, designers who know and can work in our style,” Double said. “We usually have one delivery truck per day, but we'll get three additional ones for Mother's Day weekend.”Like The Butler Florist, Double said All About Reclaimed usually obtains flowers from out of the country, but has had to turn to local growers more this year because of the air travel restrictions.Hillwig said when the Monday after Mother's Day finally comes, there might be a few stray orders for people who forgot, but the hard work is likely over. The attention turns from filling orders to making sure the books are correct, cleaning the store and trying to find some time to relax a little.“It's like the aftermath of a storm,” Hillwig said.
