Floral Disaster Training by Sweet Root Village

Guest Blogger: Sweet Root Village


There are so many things that can go wrong on an event day, and they're often completely outside of our control, no matter how much planning we do in advance. We’ve run into countless issues over the years and it is part of our job to find the fix to every crisis--large and small.

For example, we recently experienced a large ceremony urn falling over JUST as guests were starting to arrive for the festivities. This was something we could never have prepared for, as a fellow vendor setting up in the same space accidentally bumped it over, and the entire arrangement exploded all over the white carpeted stage of the ceremony. We had ten or so minutes to hustle as a team to reassemble this arrangement back into place to hold together for the rest of the ceremony with no additional foam or blooms and to clean up the stage, all while several guests sitting in their chairs watched on. So with smiles on our faces, soft spoken orders, fast moving hands, we whipped it back together!

To help prepare our team for anything that may come their way, we held a two-day, in-house training with our design team focusing on details, speed, and then “disasters.” The idea behind “disaster day” was to demystify some “worst-case scenarios” that our team may face onsite and give them some ideas for quick ways to find a solution, including giving each of our in-house designers a chance to fix a toppled arrangement on the fly in teams of two with only select tools on hand. Since this training, we’ve already noticed a huge increase in confidence in each of our event leads in how they prepare and tackle their events.

We worked through everything from fixing bouquets on the fly to recreating a large design that has fallen and been smashed to speed boutonniere making using foraged materials. We had a sit-down afterwards to chat through lots of additional scenarios and brainstorm potential solutions to get everyone’s brain pumping with ideas that would hopefully be ready to recall should a real life crisis pop up unexpectedly.

Of course, we hope that none of these situations arise, and many, many events go smoothly, but inevitably there is something to troubleshoot, even if it's very small. It is our job to fix it quickly and with a smile, all so that the client and guests never experience a hiccup in the day!

Click the button below to download a list of tools that you must have on-site for crisis management. Be sure to send this to your team as a packing checklist for every event.

Even with all the right tools, by far the most important thing in a crisis is your attitude. We always remind our team to work with a smile and a can-do mindset. Leading a team with this in mind will affect your whole crew positively and create the best results possible, no matter the situation.

Check out our Instagram Story to see how this full training played out (about half way through the highlights).

Sweet Root Village started in 2010 as an event floral design studio in Northern Virginia. "We've grown consistently in our love of flowers as well as our love of small business. Organization and logistics are huge focus points for our  team and we love sharing our methods and our workflow with our fellow designers! One of our favorite things about the floral industry right now is the growing friendly nature that is emerging, the open minds and sharing hearts and teamwork that we are seeing in our market as well as across the country and beyond. The tides are changing and we are happily along for the ride!"

Sweet Root Village recently launched an amazing floral education project on Patreon with their favorite floral recipes and other fantastic content to help your business blossom PLUS they are featured industry leaders who provide exclusive content to Curate users on The Curate Marketplace.