Wholesale Floral Supply
Products Needed to Process Bulk Wedding Flowers
Type "wholesale floral supply" into Google or Yahoo and tons of websites will come up claiming to be a wholesale. The florist wholesalers that I deal with as a retail florist usually require the buyer to furnish a retailer's license with intent to resell. Craft stores that sell discount wedding supplies may carry an assortment of bouquet holders and lace collars, but rarely have all the products that you should use to properly process and condition your online discount flowers.
Purchasing Bulk Wedding Flowers
Purchasing your own flowers in bulk can save you considerable money. Please don't try to cut corners by not buying certain fresh flower products, however. Florists go to great lengths to ensure that these flowers stay fresh throughout the whole time from receipt, until design and throughout the entire wedding day. Investing a small amount in similar products will help you have the same results!One of the greatest challenges with Do It Yourself wedding flowers is to find the right products for sale. Many are available ONLY through a wholesale floral supply warehouse. That's why I'm making them available to you in my
Supply Store.
Floralife - Quality Florist Products
Although you are not trying to make your flowers last two weeks or longer like a professional flower shop, you still want to take care that your flowers are processed correctly.This will prevent "bent necks" and early wilting due to failure of delivery of water to the flower head. Floralife is a worldwide name in quality flower nutrients. Another quality floral company that you will recognize, Oasis-Smithers, manufacturers of quality flower foam products, have recently bought the Floralife product line and will continue to produce and sell these fine wholesale floral supply products. I'll give you a brief outline of a few of them that I think you should buy some small quantities of and use when processing your flowers.
Hydration Solution - QuickDip
Floralife Quick Dip is a flower treatment that is ready-to-use right out of the container. After cutting your dry pack flower bunches under water, dunk the cut end of the stems for a quick "one second" dip in this solution. Doing this will help prevent prevent bent neck, wilting and stem plugging. It rather "wakes up" the flower and helps it suck up water to the flower head immediately after being cut for the first time. It doesn't take a great deal - one pint should more than process the flowers for one wedding.
Photo courtesy Smither-Oasis
Clean Bucket Solution
Although professional florists do use certain products to clean their flower buckets, you can do the same with some regular household bleach. Scour out the buckets before using with bleach water. A weak residue of bleach in the buckets will not hurt your flowers - rather it will keep down bacteria from forming that can spell death for your flowers. Just don't get under the impression that if some is good - more is better!!A capful of bleach in a five gallon bucket is fine for scouring out the bucket. There is no need to rinse. Do not use soap in the buckets which can be harmful to some flowers.
Fresh Flower Food
Although you don't need to buy the quantities of flower food that florists buy, investing in several 10 Gram packets to mix in with your buckets of water will nourish the flower heads and help them open bigger, sooner and hold longer. I prefer buying mine through a true wholesale floral supply rather than using "Grandma's secret recipe". Wedding flowers are too precious to take changes on home remedies!
Floralife® Finishing Touch™ Spray
This is one product I cannot design without. Finishing Touch is one wholesale floral supply item that is used by professional shops everywhere. It is ready-to-use finishing flower sealer. It can be sprayed on any flowers, fresh flower arrangements, bouquets (and potted plants) to freshen, rehydrate and protect delicate petals and blooms.I throughly mist my wedding flowers after they've been cut and in the water buckets, I spray them before handling them to design and I spray the finished design. If it's a day or two before the wedding - I always resoak the Oasis in nutrient mixed water AND remist with the Finishing Touch. Don't skip this step!!
Well . . that's pretty much my "I wouldn't do without them" list of wholesale floral supply products for fresh cut flowers. With these and quality Oasis foam - your wedding flowers will look as lovely as if a professional did them!
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