Destination Weddings in New Orleans!

Unlike many businesses that have seen sales go down as tourism had declined, we have been delighted to witness a growing trend upward, toward destination weddings in New Orleans.

With the use of our website, email, and telephone, we can work beautifully with brides to help create the wedding they’ve always hoped for. Many times we will meet the bride when she is in town taking care of wedding plans, but also there are times when we don’t ever get to see her!

A few tips we like to give brides when they first start planning a destination wedding, is to first of all, relax! We know it can be frustrating when you can’t actually be here to see the flowers in person. I like to tell brides, “they are only flowers, how can anything so beautiful be stressful?” We know flowers, it’s what we love to do, so our brides don’t need to stress over the types, styles, or even colors.

We try to make things as convenient as possible for our brides. We usually start off by asking the bride if she has any preference as to color, style or types of flowers. This is a good time to also ask if there are any flowers or colors that she absolutely can’t stand.

We also ask about the different items she may have in mind. We have, on our Wedding page, on the web site, http://www.harkinsneworleans.com/wedding_checklist.htm a document titled “Wedding Checklist”. This list, originally was created for the few traditional brides that would like to divide the costs of the wedding between the bride’s and groom’s families. We have found that it works wonders in jogging everyone’s mind when trying to list all of their items.

Our Bridal Bouquet page continues to grow, with many different color combinations and different flower types for brides to consider, but the possibilities are endless, so we always ask our brides to look through magazines, and web sites and forward any and all pictures and ideas to us. Often brides will fall in love with certain bouquets they see in magazines, which have very seasonal flowers. I suppose this happens because in the excitement of getting engaged, they immediately start planning months and months ahead of their wedding date, so they are seeing the wrong seasonal flowers. We help out by suggesting substitutes for most of the varieties. One good work-around for this is to visit the library and look at back issues of bridal magazines, for flowers that are showcased around the time of their wedding date.

The wedding magazines are a great source of ideas, though I’ve noticed that since the publications don’t list prices for the flower bouquets, corsages, centerpieces or church décor, most brides are at a loss as to an appropriate flower budget for these items. Many of the floral arrangements shown in the magazines are so lavish, they are out of reach for all but a few brides, but we can help here by offering suitable substitutions, alternate designs, and tips to scale back on many items and still stay true to the spirit of the original design. An old rule of thumb has always been that the flower budget should be about 10 percent of the total wedding budget.
Another area we help out our destination brides, is the reception. Local brides will usually have friends and family take home the centerpieces from the reception as a keepsake. When you have a destination wedding, there usually are no local friends and family. We like to offer our brides the option of renting the containers for their centerpieces so they won’t feel it wasteful to have upscale vases, or many vases, in the case of tablescapes.

Lastly, we love the unique, personal touches that people come up with to make their day so special. We welcome all ideas, so don’t be shy, bring on the wacky and funky, the sentimental and touching, we’re here to bring it all to life!