Although couples are insisting on committing to their 2009 wedding plans, the economic downturn has nonetheless brought with it a whole gamut of challenges for those intending to marry this year. Partner up the recession with the fact that the average cost of a British wedding topped £20,000 for the first time in 2008, shows that deciding when to scrimp and when to splurge on a such a monumental day isn’t going to be easy.

As the wedding season has approached, we’ve seen a significant increase in wedding flower enquiries in recent months, and with those we’re seeing more emphasis laid on price: “We’re looking for something cheap…” , “Could you advise us on the cheapest flowers…” etc. This nature of enquiry can automatically put any florist into defence mode, as any floral designer worth their salt knows that “cheap” is a relative description and doesn’t normally equate for very good (or even appropriate) flower arrangements.

Wedding Flowers on a Budget

If there is a budget involved (see below for more advice on setting wedding budgets), a wedding florist can then easily come up with flower choices and designs that will fall within that budget. According to last year’s figures, the average cost of wedding flowers in 2008 reached £381, accounting for just 2% of the overall average UK wedding budget of £20,000 (Source: Sky News, November 2008). But in most cases, wedding flowers normally take up 10-15% of the final wedding bill - thus proving every wedding is different with an array requirements and preferences.

The task of choosing wedding flowers is a personal, expressive and emotional experience, which is why we always recommend brides drop into Flowers HQ for an informal chat to discuss their requirements in person with our wedding florists, who will source the right wedding flowers for you - not only suiting your pocket but also of exceptional quality too.

Credit Crunch Wedding Flowers

While 10-15% is a good estimate for your wedding flowers bill, you can modify many floral elements to determine the actual amount you will spend on your wedding arrangements. Factors such as whether or not your preferred flowers are in season, the number, size and complexity of the arrangements all influence your final cost estimate.

In economically hard times, creativity comes to the fore, as brides are find ways to spend their wedding budget more wisely, and discovering “cheap” wedding ideas that help them save money. Here are just a few budget-friendly ideas to help you on the way to beautiful, economical wedding flowers that won’t cost you a king’s ransom.

Easy Peasey. Flowers in season are often less expensive and easier to source. For a list of common flowers for each season, visit our wedding flowers tips page for our guide to seasonal flowers. Don’t forget that flowers over peak / holiday periods such as Valentine’s, Christmas and Mother’s Day will cost more.

Simple things. Because the time taken to create your flowers will be factored into your wedding flowers bill, go for less elaborate bridal flowers which are less labour intensive.  For instance, a hand-tied or free form bouquet takes less time to create than a wired or teardrop one. For extra savings, bridesmaids can carry a single flower in a flower wand instead of a bouquet.

Filler thriller. Use more, cheaper foliage and greenery, baby’s breath, wax flower, soft ruscus etc which will pad out flower arrangements. Use flowery blooms as an accent to the arrangement rather than the main ingredient.

Bargain hunt. Shop around for end of line / discounted glassware in charity shops and budget household stores for vases. This way, for the price of renting / paying deposit on breakages, you can keep, sell on or recycle. The Christmas sale period is the perfect time to purchase candles, fairy lights and other decorations at huge discount.

Let’s go outside. Find a venue such as a park or garden that is already lush and beautiful - a springtime wedding in a garden will require little in the way of floral arrangements, while a traditional church may be breathtaking on its own. Also consider that many venues come ready decorated in the lead up to Christmas, so holding an earl-mid December wedding may provide you seasonal flowers for free.

A problem shared. Find out from your venues whether any other weddings are scheduled for the same day. If the two events can share decorating expenses, you’ll save a lot of money.

Recycle arrangements. If you can’t share your arrangements, transfer the flowers from your ceremony to your reception. Save more money on head table decoration by displaying the bridal bouquets on the head table.

Don’t Do it Yourself!

Floristry looks easier than it really is, so if you really can’t afford a florist, make sure you find someone with at least some skill and experience with flowers. We can provide flowers wholesale at discount prices for brides wishing to create their wedding flowers ‘in house’, but don’t forget you’ll need somewhere cool to store them safely and keep them fresh.

Making of the arrangements should be left to the very last minute, so best not leave them to a stressed-out, sleep deprived bride-to-be! If you don’t know what you are doing and don’t enjoy working under pressure, don’t try this - even if the temptation of saving some money is far too much to resist!

A good budget compromise would be to ask your florist to create the key arrangements such as the bridal and bridesmaid bouquets which are important to get absolutely right, then purchase additional matching stems for your own vase displays and other ad hoc uses such as buttonholes, hair flowers etc.

Jilted at the Alter?

With sterling still relatively weak against the euro (therefore inflating wholesale prices) as well as diminishing footfall, local independent florists are increasingly falling victim to the economic downturn, leaving distressed brides empty handed for their big day with little time to make alternative arrangements.

If your wedding florist goes bust, first off - don’t panic. Most florists will be able to stock your wedding flower requirements within 4-5 days, depending on how often they visit their wholesalers. If you are based in the London area (and your wedding doesn’t fall on a holiday / event day such as Mother’s or Valentine’s Day) we’ll be more than happy to pick up your order (we get fresh flowers in direct from the Dutch auctions nearly every day).

In many cases we’ve been known to slash existing quotes, and can sometimes provide wedding bouquets with just a day or two’s notice. So, even with times as they currently are, there are good deals to be found by the frugal bride. If you’re just starting to plan your wedding, our short list of 5 steps to a debt-free wedding might just be of some use…

Easy Steps Towards Recession-Proofing Your Wedding

1. Establish Your Wedding Budget
Choose a reliable method to keep track of all expenditures - there are now lots of websites that offer free budgeting services. If possible, keep your wedding fund separate from your personal accounts, so you can easily determine what’s being spent on the wedding. Don’t forget to call in all those favours: contact old mates, colleagues, family members and even the bloke down the road who you lent that jump lead to last winter, who may be able to offer their services.

2. Wedding Wedding Gifts.
Continuing from the above, barter your way to the wedding you want by asking wedding guests to offer their skills and services as a wedding present. If there’s a hairdresser or keen photographer on your guest list, time to bend their ear and put them to work! Chances are they’ll probably bring you a pressie anyway on the day, too… ;)

3. Beware Hidden Costs
Set aside 5% of your budget for those extras that are bound to sneak in one way or another. If you absolutely cannot exceed £20,000, aim to spend £19,000. When last minute costs such as VAT, fees etc come up (and they will), your reserve funds will save you from debt. Similarly, look out for deals and discount rates often offered during low season, midweek or during the day which can trim significant costs from your wedding bill.

4. Super Skinny Me
Serve three courses instead of five (saving on catering and waistlines). Have two bridesmaids instead of four (saving on dresses). Invite 100 guests instead of 200 (saving on just about everything). If you’re struggling with whom to cut from the guest list, cut out children and anyone you don’t know personally, and you’ll see that guest list rapidly streamline itself!

5. More Wine, Madame?
Don’t crack under pressure of the up-sell! That diamond-encrusted designer dress, the fancy five star hotel suite, the vintage champagne - they might seem like good ideas at the time, and it’s easy to get carried away, but they all add up. It’s important to understand which details are truly most important to you.  Be strong, prioritise what you want beforehand and you’re less likely to face a nasty surprise later.

Similar Posts: If you liked this post you may find our credit crunching post Lessons From Flowers - Tulips & the Economic Crisis interesting as well as our oodles of wedding related posts!!

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I tried to avoid the totally obvious and compiled a list of the ten issues (good and bad) that we hadn’t really expected when we set up our little online flower shop nearly three years ago.  If interested, head on over to the post to have a look at the Arena Flowers post. (PS Trevor promises he’ll fix the typos I made shortly!)

If you enjoyed the post, you may also enjoy some of our other posts relating to the early days of Flowers HQ.

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No sooner had we announced the Cancer Research UK site than we received a call from the UK’s favourite heart charity, the British Heart Foundation, which had been on the look-out for something similar to support its own fund raising efforts.

We were more than happy to oblige, especially given our previous happy experiences working with the BHF around Valentine’s Day and the good fit of hearts and romantic flowers.  So we put our creative hats on and got to work with the lovely ladies in the BHF marketing team to create a BHF Flowers website that reflects the established brand and messaging of this popular charity.

As with our Cancer Research UK partnership, 20% of the gross order value (excluding any delivery costs, which we seldom charge anyway) is donated to the British Heart Foundation, plus 100% of any donation amount (you can add a donation in checkout).  We’re working on ways to allow gift aid too.   To find out more about how we work with the UK’s leading charities, and how we can afford to donate a such a significant amount from each order, check out our blog post announcing our work with Cancer Research UK.

And in the future? Whilst we could do loads and loads of these partner charity sites, we’d prefer to keep the offer narrow and relevant to our flower and gifting business so there are unlikely to be many more (if any!).  But what is certain is that we’re very proud to be working with two of the UK’s most worthwhile charities.  Please show them your support too!

If you found this post interesting, you might also enjoy our other posts about good causes and fund raising and you might also enjoy our posts about ethics and the environment.

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With an estimated 20% of the UK population suffering from hay fever this summer, watch any weather report from now through to September and you’ll see the emphasis increasing on the ‘Pollen Count’ as the allergy season progresses and airborne allergens attack their hypersensitive victims. We all know somebody who suffers from hay fever, and you may even have thought twice about buying flowers for them over the years.

But why should a seasonal dose of rhinitis stop you from receiving or indeed sending flowers? Truth is, if their allergies are particularly severe, many flowers are going to affect the recipient negatively but, in general, the more dangerous flowers are the ones with the most pollen. So a good guideline for sending flowers to a someone who may potentially explode into an itching, weeping, snotty mess is to avoid choosing flowers that have visible pollen.

Flower No-No’s(e)

Asiatic and Longiflorum Lilies are some of the most dangerous flowers for allergy sufferers, as parts of them are covered in powdery pollen. Songstresses Tina Arena and Britney Spears (pictured, left) are both alleged to have a lily allergy.  As the story goes, knowing of her allergy,  chart rival Pink once sent Britney a bouquet of lilies when they were feuding.

However, Lilies can be a good choice for allergy sufferers, as it is easy to simply remove the stems of pollen from each flower. Just try to find a non-allergic chum to do this particular job, as it will probably have the most robust nose and eyes and running at the earliest opportunity!

Another type of flower that is particularly bad for allergy sufferers is tree flowers / blossom. When choosing a spring flower arrangement, be careful not to include almond, cherry, apple, or any other kind of tree blossom.

Top Flowers for Allergy Sufferers

Andrew, our Head Florist here at Flowers HQ recommends chrysanthemums and gerberas, with new hybrids coming onto the market bred so that the parts of the flower that used to produce pollen now produce extra petals. But watch out for regular chrysanthemums and daisies as they can be highly allergic.

Another great choice for the allergy sufferer is roses. Not only are roses the most popular cut flower to send, modern roses used in floristry don’t have much of a negative effect on allergies. The reason for this is that their pollen is too large in size to be able to become airborne and truly infiltrate the respiratory system. To allergy-proof your bouquet arrangement, choose roses with little or no smell as these will contain the least pollen.

One of the best kinds of flowers for allergy sufferers are orchids and exotic flowers. Very few types of orchids cause any pollen-related allergies, and so are quite safe for those allergic to most flowers. It is important to note, though, that some orchids may cause a slight skin rash on sensitive individuals.

If in doubt, do contact us first before placing our order.

Hypo-Allergic Wedding Flower Tips

Traditional bridal gowns don’t normally include pockets for hankies, so the last thing a bride needs are snail trails up her lace sleeves from a runny nose. If the bride or groom is known to suffer pollen allergies, here are some simple tips to keep in mind when choosing wedding flowers which will help minimise hay fever symptoms:

1. Wedding Venues
   The best strategy is to avoid airborne allergens completely by holding your wedding ceremony indoors during the peak allergy season, especially if the main culprits are tree and grass pollen. So, no posing around in country meadows for those arty post-ceremony wedding photos, then!
2. Wedding Flowers
   Allergies to flowers are mainly due to their pollen count rather than fragrance.  Flowers begin to release pollen due to the aging process, so using Arena Flowers, the freshest flowers available, will prevent this problem. As for bridal bouquets, buttonholes, and other wedding flower arrangements, there are many flowers that don’t trigger severe allergies (see above for some suggestions).
3. Other Wedding Day Triggers
   Although many people may not realise it, hay fever symptoms do not always come from allergic reactions, but instead can be caused by everyday non-allergic triggers — and not just during the allergy seasons but at any time of the year.  So beware of perfumes and hairspray, sudden changes in temperature and even cooking odours.

Allergy-Free Artificial Flowers

If you want an absolutely 100% allergy-proof alternative for hay fever sufferers, then artificial flowers are the product of choice. No-nonsense and low maintenance, we are pleased to announce the launch of our new Artificial Flowers section added to ArenaFlowers.com — due to popular demand.

We will be adding more flowers to this section throughout the year, so let us know which artificial flowers you would like to see in the future.

Click to see our full range of allergy-free artificial flowers.

By following some of these simple guidelines, we hope you enjoy a pain-free summer this year, and don’t forget to consult a GP or pharmacist if symptoms persist!

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Sadly, I couldn’t find a pyramid or a sphinx made of chocolate, presumably because the Egyptians design their confectionery around good taste and what sells, rather than around the desires of idiotic British tourists looking for the most stereotypically shaped edibles possible.  However, they do make “Cuttlefish Flavoured Crisps”, which the team reported as tasting “surprisingly good”.  In this photo they’re being held by Henrique, one of our CS team who has been manning the phones and keeping us all amused at Flowers HQ for just over a year now.

Having failed to get comedy Egyptian chocolate, at least I was able to get some very tasty Baklava with an Egyptian motif to share with the different teams and here you see Stefanie with CS’s box.

Stefanie is a bit of a polymath, not only working on customer services for our English websites, but also answering calls from our German website, Arena Blumen.  In addition, Stefanie speaks fluent French and is currently helping translate our site for the forthcoming launch of Arena Fleurs (website still under construction).  Impressive stuff!

That’s it for this episode of comedy chocolate (find V, IV, III, II and I here).  Over and out!

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Something that I think I should clarify at this juncture is the definition of a ‘toy’.  We are a florist not a toy shop so by toys I mean something that is a fun addition to our flowers and which in particular makes use of the cool possibilities that the Internet has to offer.  Here at Flowers HQ we strive to be at the cutting edge in everything we do and to maintain that position we feel it is important to be as innovative as possible with the user experience.

To date this strategy has meant that we have built many fun (but useful) accessories that are used on and off our site every day.  These “toys” allow our customers to format the way their message appears on the message card and to include a glossy photo or video message to send to the recipient.  Customers are notified by text for free as soon as their order has been delivered.  Visitors who don’t want to send real flowers can send virtual flowers using another fun toy we’ve built, our free Facebook “Flowers & Fun” application.  And if you want someone to send flowers to you, you can “send a hint” from the product page (anonymously or not, the choice is yours!).

And so to our latest toy…

As a gifting company the majority of our flowers are being delivered to someone to celebrate a birthday, anniversary, new baby, or a wedding.  These are all events that recur and if you are anything like me the dates in question will be up on you when it’s already too late.  Enter Arena Calendar Reminders!

So how is a calendar reminder a toy and how is it new I hear you ask?  True most people have access to a calendar and the idea of being forewarned of an impending date is hardly new; other flower and gift companies also offer reminder services.  But, like with everything we do at Flowers HQ, we’ve tried to improve on what everyone else has to offer  - if we’ve missed anything, please let us know in the comments!

Next time you place an order on our site you will be asked if you want to set up a reminder for this event.  Setting reminders is not compulsory and if you don’t want to set a reminder, you can skip over it in a heart beat.  But if you want it, it’s there.  In the example below I have set up a reminder for my wedding anniversary (don’t want to forget that one!).  I have set the frequency as annual (monthly or weekly being the other options available), added a date and the number of days notice I need and, of course, a description of the event (so I know what I’m reminding myself about!).   Pretty simple.

Setting up the reminder in the checkout

This event is automatically added to My Reminders in My Arena and then (in this case) 10 days before my anniversary I will get my first reminder email (we also send a reminder email on the actual day).  Also, because I’ve given Arena my UK mobile phone number, I’ll also get a free text message reminding me to get my act together.  A load off my mind.  The reminder text message will be sent at 10am (rather than at midnight) so that we don’t drive our customers into a rage by waking them up with a late night text message. Once set up I can, if I want to, go and edit the event in My Arena.

The reminders section looks like this:

Important to note that you don’t have to place an order to set up reminders, you can log in to My Arena now and set up as many reminders as you like.  Flower buying is not compulsory either.  Worth noting that we’ll never sell the data you put into your reminders to others either.  This is a tool to help our loyal customers and that’s it.

The geeky bit: A year from now I will get an email looking like the one below.  The big feature in the email is of course the date and like with all our toys the date is made in a special way.  Rather than making hundreds of different images to cover all the possible date/month combinations, we make the graphic dynamically at the time of sending the email using a server side script that combines a blank calendar icon (the white and orange image) with the date of the event.  Clever huh?!

Arena Calendar Reminders is the latest addition to what we call “My Arena“, the console that we’re gradually building to make life easier for our regular customers.  Customers can use it to view all past orders, messages and purchased items, as well as to check on the status of current orders.  Customers can also save addresses that they use regularly so that they appear automatically in checkout and don’t have to be re-entered.   My Arena also captures all your previous messages so if you’re feeling lazy next time you want to send a birthday message, you can just grab a previous message, formatting and all.

The key with with My Arena is that we’re trying really to make life as easy as possible for regular flower and gift senders, without slowing down checkout for people who are just passing through on a one off sale.  Hopefully we’re getting there.

Interested? Go check out Arena Calendar Reminders for your self now.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also enjoy other posts in our “Matters Webby” category, where we talk about all the toys and bells and whistles that we’ve built into our service.

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But it doesn’t stop there, it is actually only Great Britain, Ireland and Nigeria that celebrate Mother’s Day on the fourth Sunday of lent and, in fact, most of our international cousins consider May to be the month of Mothering Sundays with the most popular date falling on the second Sunday of May.

It is generally believed that Mother’s Day is celebrated internationally around the world on a variety of days through the year because the event has a number of different origins. For instance, in Iran the day originally commemorated the birthday of Fatima, Muhammad’s daughter. In Canada, Mother’s Day was introduced in the mid-19th century as a call to unite women against war.

With our burgeoning portfolio of European ventures in the guise of Arena Bloemen (Netherlands), Arena Blumen (Germany), and Arena Bloemen Belgium, as well as our international flower delivery service, our development team now consider Arena mums all year round, not just for Mother’s Day.

To help them, and you, here’s a comprehensive list of the countries we serve, and their respective Mother’s Days for the next twelve months…

May 3rd: Hungary, Lithuania, Portugal, Spain.

May 8th: South Korea (Parents’ Day)

May 10th: USA, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belize, Bermuda, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iceland, Italy, India, Jamaica, Japan, Latvia, Leichtenstein, Malaysia, Malta, Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Slovakia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Switzerland, Trinidad, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Venezuela, Zimbabwe.

May 15th: Paraguay.

May 26th: Poland (”Dzień Matki”).

May 27th: Bolivia.

May 30th: Nicaragua.

May 31st: Dominican Republic, France, Mauritius, Morocco, Sweden, Tunisia.

June 14th: Luxembourg.

June 28th: Kenya.

August 12th: Thailand.

August 15th: Antwerp Province (Belgium), Costa Rica.

October 12th: Malawi.

October 14th: Belarus.

October 18th: Argentina.

December 8th: Panama.

December 22nd: Indonesia.

Between 30th January - 1st March: Israel.

February 2nd: Greece.

February 14th: Norway.

March 8th: Armenia. Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine.

March 14th: UK, Ireland.

March 21st: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen

March 25th: Slovenia.

April 7th: Armenia.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to know more about Mother’s Day, check out Will’s rather excellent blog post on the moon’s influence on when we celebrate Mother’s Day in the UK.

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Of course, some people aren’t subscribed to our newsletters so don’t ever get to see the winners . As a result, in future we’ll be putting the winner on the blog too.  But in the meantime, we thought we’d show all of our previous lucky newsletter winners.  So here we go:

May 2009 - Paul M from Coatbridge, Scotland

No picture received. Boo!

April 2009 - Kalsoom from Birmingham

“My first order with Arena Flowers was back in December for some Grand Prix roses for my partner’s birthday,” Kalsoom told us on learning of her win.
“He absolutely loved them, and surprisingly they are still standing - albeit dark and crinkly - two months on. It’s a fantastic service I recommend to anyone in the world.”

March 2009 - Pippa who lives in Antigua, West Indies

On being told of her win, Pippa tells us “I find the Arena flower service an excellent way of keeping in touch with my mother, who sadly had a stroke over ten years ago, and has not been able to speak since, so no chance of chats on the phone unfortunately. She loves flowers, and this is a wonderful way of brightening up her life.”

February 2009 - Doreen from Guernsey

January 2009 - Linda W from Leeds

December 2008 - Sharon from Plymouth

November 2008 - William A from Surrey

On being told of his win, William sent this message: “Arena Flowers provides a first-class service. Completely reliable, you always deliver that WOW factor with your amazing bouquets, and I’m a big fan of the easy-to-use web site too. Thank you, Arena Flowers!”

Oooh, you’ll make us, blush, William. Thanks for the great feedback. We appreciate it!

October 2008 - Andrew W from Surrey

September 2008 - Carlos M from Northumberland

No picture received. Boo!

August 2008 -Trish N from Sheffield

July 2008 - Melanie S from Haywards Heath

June, May & April 2008 - Kirsten L from Surrey, William N from Essex & Mark S from Worcestershire

Photo FAIL! Actually, this was our fault as we only picked winners really close to the deadline so no time to get a picture!

March 2008 - Jacqui M from Blackpool

February 2008, January 2008 & November 2007 - Siobhan M from Edinburgh, Kathleen from London & Michael B from Canada

No photo.  Sometimes customers don’t want to be in the newsletter, out of shyness…or maybe their partner might want to know who they’ve been sending flowers to! (NB not suggesting that that was the case with these two anonymous winners, but it does happen! Don’t worry, our lips are sealed!)

December 2007 - Mo from London

October 2007 - Philip O from oops, we forgot to ask.

Philip also apologised that he only had this rather serious work photo to hand!

September 2007 - Steve U from oops, we forgot to ask again!

August 2007 - Mark H from hmmm. Again we didn’t ask. Maybe we only started asking in December 2007

Mark was kind enough to write back as soon as the flowers were delivered, saying:

“The flowers you delivered to Alicia yesterday were simply breathtaking (Alicia’s own words) and so thank you once again for a fantastic job.”

Thanks, Mark!

July 2007 - Jennifer H

Jennifer said this: “I’m really thrilled to have won – all of the flowers I’ve ordered in the past have been absolutely fantastic, I’m just so excited that I actually won!   It’s my parents’ wedding anniversary next month and I was planning on ordering them some flowers anyway so it’s perfect timing too! My Mom really loves roses and gerberas so I’ll probably get something bright and cheery along those lines! Thanks again!

Thanks, Jennifer!

June 2007 - Claire D

April 2007 - Estanis M from London

March 2007 - Danuta R

January 2007 - Matt H

And finally, from our first ever newsletter, we had the following:

Christmas Winners
Every time we send a newsletter, one of our subscribers gets a free order worth up to £50. As it’s Christmas, we got a bit carried away and decided to choose three winners this time round, just for the fun of it. Congratulations to this month’s winners:

So that’s the lot!  They really exist and they’re always very happy to win the prize.

If you want to sign up for the newsletter, click here (it’s free and there’s no obligation to buy).  You never know, you could be the next lucky winner; and if you’re not, you’ll just get exclusive discounts and other offers and news direct from Flowers HQ.  Right.  Enough of the sales talk.

Thanks for reading and thanks to all our winner for sending in their pictures!  Next stop: Mother’s Day!

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Like last year, when we did the BHF Valentine’s Appeal, we are keen on giving our customers an opportunity to support BHF, the nation’s heart charity, dedicated to saving lives through pioneering research, patient care, campaigning for change and by providing vital information.

Every year, approximately 200, 000 lives are lost to heart and circulatory diseases. BHF is aiming to raise funds to prevent lives being devastated from heart diseases and relies entirely on charity to make a difference to people’s lives.

You have a couple of days more to go red this month and show your support for the British Heart Foundation’s Red for Heart Campaign by visiting here. They have plenty of information on how you could go red and help them fight heart diseases.

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Last year, post Valentine, we had showcased behind the scenes activities of the hardworking team of flower fanatics at the Flowers HQ, but thanks to the new micro-blogging / social networking phenomenon called Twitter, everything was posted in real time this year. It was definitely fun posting pictures from phones when loading flowers to the delivery vans and driving to deliver them. Anyway, to cut the story short, for all those who didn’t follow us on Twitter, here’s a photoblog of the team, flowers, vans, and more…republished from what was posted on Arena Flowers Twitter Account.

In the beginning there was love…and balloons

Our very own Willy Wonka…Bill Keeling, MD, Prestat Chocolates, our exclusive chocolates partner

David and Goliath getting ready for the Valentine duel…Arena Flowers Delivery Van -Vs- our delivery partner’s truck

The Arena love machine kicks in, but let us not forget those with a birthday.

Love is in the air. Roughly 8′6” in the air.

Blast from the past - From I Love You Balloons to Heart of Chocolates

The One - The flower arrangement we mean…

And love is all around us…

Fraud Ninjas…

Men (& Women) at work…The Arena Flowers Assembly Line

Fighting Fraud With Apples

Trailer Attack at the Flowers HQ

Nick and the Boxes of Love

Be My Valentine - Will & his Co-Pilot

That’ll be all unfortunately, although we have plenty more on our Twitter account. If you liked our team and our flowers, please feel free to read our previous Valentine’s day post here. In case you are already on Twitter, and have been unaware about our Twitter account, please follow Arena Flowers here.

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1. What does she actually want? A survey by a US florist found that 76% of women didn’t want red roses for Valentine’s Day.  The favoured option was a mixed bouquet, apparently.

   

2. Make her look good - send flowers to her at work: Valentine’s Day is on a Saturday this year.  That’s handy for us flower people (less traffic for our drivers) and for couples (as they can spend the whole day together).  On the other hand, part of the the fun of sending Valentine’s flowers is the girl (or boy!) receiving them at their workplace and being the envy of their colleagues.  There are definitely brownie points to be won with a lucky Friday 13th workplace delivery.
3. Save money part 1 - Avoid red flowers: Prices for all red flowers jump for Valentine’s, irrespective of the flower variety.  Pink flowers’ prices also go up, but not by nearly as much.  Other colours are far more reasonable - a white rose bouquet, for instance, symbolises young love so is entirely appropriate to send on Valentine’s and our mass of white roses is far more affordable than the mass of red roses.
4. Be fun - laughter is the best aphrodisiac: Add a photo in our checkout and we’ll print it and send it with your flowers.  You can also record a funny / romantic Valentine’s video message to send to the object of your desire.   Lots of people make their flower deliveries more personal using these low cost but high impact options. After all, they’re trying to outdo the other suitors who are probably just sending champagne, chocolates, balloons, teddies or maybe an “I Love You” card (you can send all such gifts with Arena too, of course).
5. All red roses are not created equal: Our red roses are, frankly, better than 99% of red roses out there. Not boasting, just being honest really.  They are long-stemmed, Grand Prix red roses. They come from one of the top three rose growers in Holland.  They’re not the cheapest.  But they are very very good.  We totally understand that some people don’t want to spend that much on roses, hence suggesting alternative Valentine’s flowers (see next tip) and gifts. But, if you absolutely, positively must have red roses, then ours are the best. We’ve bought a lot fewer this year (60% less than last year) and we agreed a deal way in advance in order to get a great price.  When the stems we’ve bought run out, they’ve run out.  That’s it.  We aren’t going to buy any more.  We expect our red roses to have sold out by by the 11th or 12th Feb after which time, we’ll only be selling other varieties of flowers.
6. Save money part 2 - Avoid roses altogether: Red roses prices go through the roof for Valentine’s, with the price of a red rose stem often increasing by 500%.  Whilst other varieties also rise at this time, you will get a far better deal if you buy an arrangement featuring a different variety, such as a pink lily bouquet or a 100 tulips bouquet (100 tulips for less than 24 red roses makes a lot of economic sense, plus the tulips will grow in the vase and create an amazing effect over the following days).  Alternatively, keep the number of red roses in the arrangement low, as in our Valentine’s The One.
7. You get what you pay for, so be careful: “If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”  If you buy supermarket flowers, you’ll get supermarket flowers.  If one of our competitors sends you an offer for a dozen red roses for £20 including delivery (which some are doing), then read the small print.  They probably won’t guarantee the day of delivery (not ideal for Valentine’s!) and the rose heads are likely to be the size of a half-eaten M&M.  There are lots of other marketing ploys out there plus the big relay companies charge hefty commissions too.  We avoid any of that rubbish and just focus on doing a great job and saving costs for customers wherever we can.

   

8. Wow her in the kitchen: Our friends over at Jamie Oliver’s site have put up loads of good ideas for Valentine’s meals and home cooking and thoughts on how to get round credit crunchiness.  We suspect turkey twizzlers won’t be on the menu though. Or, if you like being all web 2.0 and user-generated, you might want to head over to MyDish.co.uk, a friendly site for food ideas and recipes (you could even win some Arena Flowers there).
9. Bonus 9th tip - Send a hint: If you’re expecting flowers or gifts from someone and don’t want them to send you the usual rubbish, then send them a hint.  There’s a “Send a Hint” button on every product page which allows you to send a snazzy email with a picture of the flowers you want plus your message. You can choose to send the hint anonymously or add your name.  If do send anonymously, be prepared for a nasty surprise - your partner might send the flowers to their other girlfriend/boyfriend!

Hope some of that was helpful and or interesting.  Now it’s up to us to get down to work and get ready for the big day.  It’s going to be unbeliveably busy - here are some pics of Flowers HQ at Valentine’s 2008.  We’ll add some more pics once the big day has been and gone!  Hope Valentine’s goes well for you!

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The enquiry from Marika, organiser of the Think Pink Wedding Show came late in the day last week to see whether Arena Flowers may be interested in exhibiting last minute. Apparently, a couple of other London florists had let her down at the eleventh hour, and the show was left conspicuously missing wedding flowers from the burgeoning list of exhibitors for the show in Raynes Park, south west London.

Our florists were more than happy to rise to the challenge, and Judith got her thinking cap on while I started knocking together some promotional literature. With the flowers arriving freshly picked from Holland very early Saturday morning; our wedding florists Judith, Andrzej and Paulina got to work at the crack of dawn to create not one but four beautiful wedding bouquets for the show, as well as three coordinating buttonholes, two table arrangements and a gorgeous cascading tall vase display.

Once completed, the next challenge was to very carefully pack the wedding flowers so they weren’t damaged in delivery. With two drivers and an anxious florist overseeing the operation, it was a real eye-opener to see that as much care and strategic planning go into the delivery as do with the actual creation of wedding flowers!

Leaving just after 9am, it was straight to Raynes Park in the van with our rather lovely driver Jacek who put up with me in the passenger seat as I tried to prepare best I could for the unknown! On the way through Barnes I spotted a heron stalking the Barn Elms football pitches, just a few feet from the busy thoroughfare - wasn’t expecting that…but it kind of reminded me of my mission - a lone stalker, drawing in those brides to my lair of sumptuous wedding flowers!

Met with a huge bottleneck queue of cars and vans outside the venue, we made the decision to quit the extraordinary wait and frantically carry our booty the final 100 yards, heave them up the vast stairs (no lift!!!) and set up our pitch for the day with just an hour to spare before the doors opened to the public.

As soon as the show started, the event was packed with excited brides-to-be, mums, fiancées, bridesmaids and other womenfolk eagerly sourcing wedding garb and accoutrements from start to finish. Located right next to the entertainment, we found ourselves in a prime spot and, although a little deafened by the steel band (!!), the Arena Weddings stand was kept populated by interested parties and potential clients throughout the day. There was also the odd glass of plonk to entice visitors to my side of the ‘pond’…later polished off by me and a few other dry-of-mouth wedding suppliers located nearby.

The event seemed to go quickly and I was particularly pleased with the interest our wedding flowers arrangements generated, especially as this was pretty much new territory for us and a few miles out from the comfort zone of Flowers HQ! With online enquiries already coming in off the back of our first event, I am confident that we may be returning to the London Wedding Show circuit again soon - but perhaps with a bit more advance notice next time!

Interestingly, there were two common questions asked by visitors to the show: ‘Are they real flowers?’ and ‘How can I keep my wedding flowers budget down?’. To answer the first question, yes - all our flowers are real (maybe some of our flowers look just too perfect!), fresh and - wherever possible - ethically sourced. As regards budgeting for your wedding flowers, that’s for my next blog post - coming soon!

The wedding flowers on display at the Think Pink Wedding show last Saturday were: Amnesia roses, Cool water roses, Schwarzwalder calla lilies bridal bouquet (from £65), guest table arrangement (from £50) and buttonhole (from £7.50); Cool water roses, Limbo roses, Sea holly / thistles bridal bouquet (from £65); Sweet Avalanche and Sea holly bridal bouquet (from £65) and buttonhole (£7.50); Orchid cascade bridal bouquet (from £120), vase arrangement (from £26) and buttonhole (£7.50); and large mixed vase display including while lilies, pink mini gerberas, sea holly, sweet avalanche roses, limbo roses, carnations, and completed with soft ruscus and bear grass (from £80 plus vase hire).

Click here for a quick movie of the Arena Flowers stand at the Think Pink Wedding Show

If you enjoyed this post, you may want to check out our recent blog post on Winter Wedding Flowers, or learn more about our team of dedicated Wedding Florists or perhaps see how Arena Weddings began, with Jackie’s original blog post!

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Search doesn’t occur in a vacuum

It’s a very familiar concept for marketers that no marketing channel (offline or online) works independently from another.  Exposure to advertising in print, television and radio commonly results in online traffic and of course, online search.  Offline push, online pull.  A survey by iProspect, 2007 showed that 67% of respondents searched online as a direct result of exposure to an offline marketing channel.

Whilst the concept is familiar, the potential benefit of the search demand created by offline advertising isn’t always harnessed effectively online by marketing departments or agencies and it is worth considering search behaviour when engaging in any offline marketing.

Using search prompts in offline campaigns

Increasingly, companies and organisations recognise this relationship and attempt to guide the consumer by encouraging them to “search online for [brand/company/campaign]” within the advertising campaign, rather than listing a long and often forgettable URL or telephone number.  Government campaigns have been doing this for some time – for example, Direct.gov’s Act on Co2 campaign in 2007, in which consumers were prompted to “search online for ‘act on co2’” in all the offline media.

The public duly responded, and there was a large increase in searches for the term “act on co2” (below is a screen shot from ‘Google Insights for Search” showing search interest for ‘act for co2’ between October 2006 to Jan 2009).

The offline push was very clear, and the search demand it created was caught by presence of the direct.gov content in both the natural and paid search channels.

More recently, a new government initiative promoting healthier lifestyles “change4life” also has a search prompt in the offline campaigns “search online for ‘change4life’”.

This campaign, which will cost the UK tax payer £75m over the next three years, so far has less than optimised search engine results listings on Google, with no paid search ad shown at the time of writing (although competitors are showing for the term), and press articles ranking above the campaign content on the NHS.uk domain (content which looks unoptimised for natural search).

Furthermore, ambiguity has been introduced by the use of ‘4’ instead of ‘for’ in the search prompt.  Searching Google for ‘change for life’ (which has shown as great an increase as searches for ‘change4life’ according to Google trends), shows first results which look relevant but are actually entirely different websites, unrelated to the Department of Health campaign.

It is clearly worth ensuring that the search results shown for a search prompt reflect the messages and websites you want consumers to see, and that the PPC budget assigned stretches far enough.  Earlier this year, confusion abounded when Orange launched a huge re-branding campaign with “search for ‘i am’” featuring on TV, radio, print and outdoor ad copy – despite the site not ranking in the natural search space at all for such a generic term (8 months on, the site currently ranks 2nd in Google); quite a few negative press articles also surface for search variations such as “orange i am” and “i am orange”.  Additionally, there were many competitors bidding on the ‘i am’ search term hoping to piggyback onto Orange’s campaign and driving up Orange’s PPC costs significantly.

Searchers don’t necessarily search for product/ brand

Some advertising creates an online search response without necessarily prompting it as with the examples above.  The infamous drumming gorilla Cadbury’s advert can be seen to have prompted a massive search response in Google.  Interestingly, there appeared to be a greater increase in searches for the generic term ‘gorilla’ than there was for the ‘cadbury’s’.

We can’t necessarily assume the terms and words people will search for when finding out more about something they’ve seen in offline marketing.  Sometimes a consumer may recall a tag line, image or theme rather than a product, brand or company.  This is worth considering when bidding on terms or optimising content for search campaigns related to offline advertising – it is worth broadening target words related to the advert or campaign rather than specific products or names alone.

Another example is the British Heart Foundation’s 2 minute ad “Watch your own heart attack”.  It aired on the 10th of August with much publicity prior to launch, and the search response to this publicity on Google is evident below:

Again, a greater response can be seen for the more generic term ‘heart attack’ than ‘british heart foundation’.  The BHF website doesn’t rank in the top 10 for ‘heart attack’ in the natural listings, so with luck they had PPC advertising with very targeted ad copy ensuring that they caught all of the search demand they generated.

Increase search spend/efforts during times of offline activity

Search prompted by strategic offline advertising can put companies at a competitive advantage.  You may have noticed that in the UK, Famous Grouse whisky is only advertised around Christmas time, when sales of spirits increase.  This type of reminder may create more brand searches for Famous Grouse compared to competitors.  Below shows ‘ardbeg’ whisky search interest vs. ‘famous grouse’.  We can see that the search difference between ‘famous grouse’ at Christmas versus other times of the year relates closely to the TV advertising – Ardbeg whisky on the other hand remains more stable in terms of search over the same time period.  It is conceivable that the offline advertising is generating this search footfall and giving Famous Grouse a competitive advantage, at least online.

It would be wise to up-weight PPC or natural search push to correspond with the timing of strategic offline campaigns to catch all the extra search demand generated.  Although this seems a logical and intuitive way to operate, with many larger companies using different agencies and different departments to run their ad campaigns, often communication is lost or is weak.  A study by iProspect, 2008 shows that 45% of companies surveyed do not integrate offline with online marketing citing having different departments managing the different channels or not having considered it as some of the most common reasons for lack of integration.

7 Top Tips to Integrate Offline Marketing with Search:

Some of these examples allow us to draw up a list of guidelines to ensure you make the most of search demand you are generating offline:

1. Integrate campaigns by ensuring that the search marketing team are kept up to date about offline campaigns.  Offline advertising campaigns should ideally budget for PPC spend, especially if they are prompting online search.  For natural search, where visibility can take a long time to achieve, terms and language used in the offline campaign should be known well in advance of the start of the campaign.
2. Ensure that when prompting consumers to “search for [product/name/brand]” online, a) you have targeted PPC ad copy related to the offline campaign b) you rank in the natural search space for the term.  The more generic the term, the pricier the PPC will be and the harder it will be to rank naturally.
3. Broaden the search terms targeted to include tag lines, themes or characters used in the offline campaign.  Don’t assume consumers will remember the brand name or product name.
4. Minimise potential misspellings or ambiguity of search prompts in offline campaigns by choosing something simple (but not too generic) and ensure that you rank for keyword variations naturally as well as bidding on them with PPC.
5. Up-weight search spend and natural visibility focus for times when offline campaigns are live to ensure that you catch as much of the search demand you generate as possible.
6. Bear in mind that competition for the PPC cost may increase as opportunistic competitors may start bidding on prompted search terms.
7. Beware of wasteful PPC cost in response to an offline campaign.  A campaign which drives interest online could be costly in terms of PPC especially if the offline teasers don’t specify what the marketing is for.  An example would be Posterscope’s Prism Search Tool, a product for marketing professionals.  The marketing campaign - brightly coloured posters on the tube and billboards around London – showed the word “Ooghle” within a search bar with no further information to indicate what the product did or the target market. With such widespread marketing and a lack of consumer discrimination (and relatively low natural search visibility) the campaign would have drawn many non-marketing searchers; clicking on their PPC ads with no chance of converting.  Having the ads only run in marketing trade press would have been much more targeted without losing the strength of the point being made.

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On display will be some of Judith (one of our award-winning florists)’s beautiful floral work especially created for this very special wedding fair in aid of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The arrangements have also been designed with seasonal, ethically sourced flowers and take into consideration today’s tough economic climate, which has had an impact on wedding budgets up and down the country this year.

We at Arena Flowers want to make sure every bride feels like a princess without breaking the bank on their wedding flowers, making us the first choice for wedding planners throughout London and the South East. So it’s no wonder we’re fast becoming one of Cosmo Bride’s favourite stockists!

And talking of princesses and the glossies, come along to the event and you will also get the chance to view a stunning private collection of vintage wedding dresses dating from Victorian times, including a sample from Princess Diana’s iconic wedding gown.

Come join the fun from 11am-4pm. Entry fee is just £1 - which goes direct to Breakthrough Breast Cancer - and kids go free, so no excuses if you’re in town!

Wear It Pink Wedding Show
David Lloyd Health & Fitness Club
Bushey Road,
Raynes Park
London SW20 8TE
Click for directions

Full report with piccies to be posted next week - but if you need an immediate wedding flower fix, check out this post, this post or even this post about sourcing flowers for gothic wedding bouquets. Bride-tastic!

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But then I remembered that Jackie, also our head of CS and the voice at the end of the telephone, is  familiar with my strategic planning ability and the level of my management expertise.  She clearly realised that on my occasional trips to Holland, the Space Hopper would make more than adequate replacement for me and would fill my shoes with ease. So, I duly inflated it and installed it in my chair, ready to take over my duties in my absence.

Here is the sight that will greet Sam, Stan and Adarsh tomorrow morning as they walk into the office. Hopefully it’ll raise a laugh to start their day off.  Either that or they’ll think I’ve gone totally insane and / or become as cringeworthy as David Brent.  Or maybe they won’t even notice the difference.

My biggest concern is that the Space Hopper might do a better job than me and I’ll get made redundant. :-|

PS And for those that are wondering, no, I haven’t touched a drop!

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