Trusting Your Florist: Leah & Samuel’s Romantic Calistoga Wedding
Photographer : Jennifer Bagwell
This past September, I had the joy of designing wedding flowers for Leah and Samuel in beautiful Calistoga. Their love story is one of my favorites—they’re high school sweethearts who have grown together for years, and their wedding day was filled with warmth, joy, and the kind of love that inspires my work as a floral designer.
When Leah first reached out, she didn’t send me a list of specific flowers. Instead, she gave me something even more meaningful: a feeling. She wanted soft blushes, creams, whites, and a natural, garden-style aesthetic. She trusted me to interpret her vision, and that trust allowed me to design something truly special.
Why Trusting Your Florist Matters
Many couples don’t realize that one of the best ways to maximize your floral budget is to keep things open-ended. When a client asks for very specific flowers—like peonies, ranunculus, or sweet peas—the cost can climb quickly, and there’s always a risk that those blooms won’t be available due to weather, seasonality, or supply chain issues.
But when you give your florist a color palette and a style rather than a fixed list, it opens up so much creative freedom. It allows us to source the best possible flowers available that week—and often, it means your arrangements will look even more beautiful than if we had stuck to a rigid plan.
This is also why you’ll often see a “substitution clause” in wedding floral contracts. Flowers are a live product; shipments can be delayed, crops can fail, and certain varieties may simply not be available. By building flexibility into the design process, we ensure that your florals will always be fresh, seasonal, and gorgeous, even if we have to pivot from the original plan.
The Making of Leah’s Bouquet
For Leah’s bouquet, I started my flower hunt at the San Francisco Flower Market. While I knew I wanted to feature garden roses, I was keeping an eye out for a focal flower that would set the tone. That’s when I spotted them: buckets of stunning blush dahlias. They immediately spoke to me, and I knew they would be the star of Leah’s bouquet.
From there, everything else fell into place. I added garden roses for fullness and softness, blush and white winter berries for texture, and spray delphinium for wispiness and movement. Originally, I had hoped to use sweet peas, but none were available at the market that week—so delphinium became the perfect substitute. The end result was a bouquet that felt effortless, airy, and romantic, exactly in line with Leah’s vision.
The Joy of Creative Freedom
What I loved most about working with Leah is that she never once micromanaged the details. She shared her budget, her palette, and her style—and then she trusted me to take it from there. That trust gave me the freedom to create florals that were not only beautiful, but also stretched her budget further than if we had been tied to specific flower requests.
When Leah saw her bouquet and the rest of her wedding florals, she was pleasantly surprised by how it all came together. That’s the magic of letting your florist work with the season: you get flowers that are fresh, unique, and perfectly suited to your wedding day.
A Note to Future Brides and Grooms
If you’re planning your wedding, here’s my advice: choose your florist based on their portfolio, style, and design philosophy. If their work resonates with you, trust them. Give them a color palette and a feeling, and then let them bring your vision to life with the best blooms available.
Because sometimes, the most beautiful weddings happen when you let go of the checklist and trust the process.