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Struggling to turn your floral design talent into a profitable, scalable, and stress-free business? Welcome to The Floral CEO® Podcast—the ultimate audio destination for wedding and event florists, flower-shop owners, and creative entrepreneurs who want to book bigger budgets, price with confidence, and lead like a true CEO.
Hosted by Jeni Becht, award-winning wedding florist, event designer, and floral business coach with 25 + years in the industry, each weekly episode dives into:
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Hello flower friends. This is Jen. I want, now that this weekend especially, I- and actually just recently, uh, I have been, just because of the sheer size of some of the weddings that I've been doing, I've been doing some tear downs. And I have a couple, uh, freelancers that, you know, are really trying to start their business and, you know, we started talking, and they hadn't, you know, done a lot of tear downs.
And so I feel like doing the things that you are, you know, really trying to put out there in the world, 'cause, like, if you're doing a big wedding, i- in most cases, tear down is going to be part of it. So I feel like, you know, just getting that experience of doing a tear down is really critical. But Just in case, or maybe you're doing tear downs and they always feel like a hot mess, I want to talk about the art of a tear down.
For one, you need to start off with, and making sure that you have the proper resources. Because if you have just, like, way too much stuff and a time window that will not allow you to tear that much stuff down, it, it doesn't matter if you are the most strategic person in the world, that tear down might not work in that timeframe.
So I feel like the art of the tear down is making sure you really have a- a timeframe that is setting you up for success, because I have had, and actually just one of the girls in the Floral CEO Mastermind just had this, um, they were giving her a 30-minute tear down window. That does not work, you guys. I- if you're going to go get your boxes, get things off tables, be able to carry the boxes out, pack things up, like, it's just not happening in 30 minutes.
They're on crack. Uh, the minimum amount of tear down time for me is one hour, and if for some reason their timeline doesn't allow that, then I'm coming early and starting to tear down things that can be teared down ahead of time. So the first thing that I start out with is when I'm setting up, where I put the things that I need to pack up at the end of the night, making sure that is it i- in a convenient spot that's very accessible and organized.
I like to make sure that we're tucking it potentially, like, under a table, or it's in a nearby closet or room that's very accessible. I had a venue actually this weekend that it's a mansion, and it has multiple, like, kind of almost multiple wings. So, like, the house is here, and then it's got a, uh, an add on that is actually a...
I think it was, was an addition, but it has a walkway, so it's, like, not part of the actual structure. So I then had to, because there's no storage in this addition, I had to take my boxes and put them all the way through, um, you know, I walked through basically outside into the other building, and then they, it was down, like, a long hallway and- Like, it sucked.
So I made sure that they were all stacked together and they were easily grabbable. And actually the staff there was really nice and she helped me bring them over there because I think that they know it's not a convenient spot. But making sure that they're really accessible as possible is super important.
Uh, the next thing, the first thing that I am doing when I'm going into a teardown, if possible, is trying to get rid of the flowers If, you know, let's just say the last dance is at 11:30, I am going to ask the client if I can come at, like, 11:10 or 11:15 so that I can grab flowers and put them near the doorway, or I can hand them physically out to people.
That is so helpful, you guys, because if you can have them take home things, why wouldn't you? You know, like, you're not having to deal with, with, like, getting rid of all this stuff. It's magical. Like, have them take it home. Then, once you've got all these things there... And I'm not talking about, like, taking every single stem, you guys.
I'm talking about, like, if they're centerpieces, I like to design centerpieces that are in containers that can just go home with people, or they go in a Lomi dish that is slipped in a rental container. So I love when they can just take them home. If that is something that you can't do, like, and you're, you know, using some special containers, like, I've never had a case where I couldn't put a Lomi dish in there.
If you are a foam-free florist, that does make it trickier because, you know, you have chicken wire mechanics or a moss burrito or something, or an o- ocean pouch or whatever. That makes it trickier. But I, um... I mean, you could use, uh, the, you know, agril or, you know, if you are into the renewal foam or whatever.
But there are options out there, and try to get those centerpieces going home with people. Um, I even clip the cages off of a arch, and I try... I mean, those are big. Any floor pieces that were from the aisle and everything, I try to get everything to go home with people because that is less that I need to tear apart and less to compost.
So that's step one. Get those flowers out. I will even sometimes request, if it's a lot, if there's a table. Like, there was a memory table at one of my tear downs, um, 'cause I actually on Saturday night did two dare- tear downs, and there were... At the first one, there was an arch and arch pieces, and I had used some s- silk Smylex to make it look a little fancier, and then there was bud vase centerpieces, votives, floating candles centerpiece with greenery, and votives.
So the couple wanted to keep all the actual flowers, so they actually even took all the bud fla- vase flowers, which was kind of crazy, and they ordered little bags to put them in off of Amazon. Then I took like the cage, and actually the couple cages from the arch, tore the arch down, um, and you know, those all went home with guests.
So I did not take any flowers home from that event, which was really interesting. But I g- grabbed my boxes, um, got them over there. This space was actually empty at that time, so the first thing that I did... If the flowers have pretty much... And especially if like staff has moved everything, like then this is a lot less worrisome, but if like staff is at the tables, then you need to figure things out.
So I normally, my first act, and i- if for some reason you couldn't have came early to hand out flowers, and they didn't wanna make a big deal out of handing out flowers, I will go and blow out candles first. That is the key. Before moving them, we need to blow them out, and we need to let that settle. I use metal long-burning tea lights in my votives because I feel like it helps contain the melted wax, and it doesn't get as, um, you know, like those plastic cups can also melt.
And I just blow them out. Um, on Amazon, they actually have new power candle blower-outers. If you put it on a lower speed, if you put it on a high speed it can blow wax, uh, which is then another mess to clean up. But if on a low speed, you literally just like kind of flag it over all your candles, it's amazing, and, um, is a must-have on tear down.
And I will put that in the show notes because I think it's so amazing. But grow- blowing the candles out first before you're moving them is going to help you so much in not having to actually do a bunch of unnecessary cleanup. Because if you are moving them before the wax is dry, you got wax going everywhere, and that is not going to be fun to clean up So next part.
We've blown out all the candles. Hopefully you or the venue has a cart. I often, when I'm seeing new florists do a tear down, they're going to table to table and grabbing and then moving and, you know, kind of condensing that way. It is so much easier if you have like a two-tier cart to load all the votives, load all the bud vases, load whatever it is.
You know, we had pillar candles, floating candles, taper candles, all the things at one of the weddings. And we were able to just kind of like mass load it onto one cart, take it to one table, and, you know, we had a garbage, we're throwing whatever we wanna throw away, and kind of discerning all the different spots that we need to do, and easy peasy.
So if you are, you know, wanting to be efficient as possible, grab a cart l- and just drive it down your lanes of tables and load your product up there. And also, if you're doing a setup, that's the best way to do it for a setup too. You drive and go, drive and drop, drive and drop, drive and drop that cart Then we've got all of our candles.
Now, I personally do not like to dump my candles at the venue because I think it's kind of... It's just disrespectful because you're putting garbage that's not realistically the, um, venue's garbage. So I go in and leave all the candles in, and then I open all my bins on a table. So my pack up bins, I use underbed totes with sock organizers for my votives, and so I throw them in there, and it works so good because it kind of flexes for the different sizes.
Then I have taller tubs that are literally the perfect size for, um, taller votives or larger votives. Then I have tubs with paper that I wrap my chimneys in. So to make this easier down the road, we have three bins. One's the small bin, the medium bin, and then the large bin. And so all the small ones at tear down go in there, all the medium go in the medium, and all the large go in the large.
And I know that seems silly, but there's nothing more than sucks that when you're going to go and s- you know, start getting your inventory ready for your next event, and there's a bunch of mix-match crap in all of these because you were so busy tearing all that shit apart. The same thing goes for if you're tearing down s- um, pillar candle bases.
Get the pillar candle bases that are all the same size in the same box. Do the same with the medium size. Do the same with the large size. I know that seems like, ugh, I can't, like, slow down enough. I just fine, in 45 minutes, got all of the proper things in their proper containers. You just need to have a strategy, plan of attack.
We got our cart. We got all of our things together, and the next thing that is my go-to hack, if you have floating candle bases, I always bring a bucket, and then I ask for a garbage because the floating candle v- um, you know, I don't need those. So I definitely will, if I can throw them, 'cause I think they almost expect those to be thrown at the venue.
I just ask, and they bring a trash over, and so I dump, and then it goes to the trash. So- That's a really h- kind of a, a tricky thing too, because you wanna also make sure that you're dumping that water n- not, like, in a regular hand washing sink. Like, the venue I was at this weekend that I had to dump in, it's, like, one of the sinks said, "This is not a dumping sink.
This is a hand washing only sink." So I just thought that that was kind of an interesting observation. All right. The next thing is you've gotten all your things in the right containers. You've gotten them in, you know, all the proper places. You need to make sure that, um, you're properly kind of distributing the weight on your cart.
I have watched chaos ensue when somebody's pushing a cart out and a whole tote full of chimneys was loosely rested on the cart and fell off. So we wanna make sure that we are really good and secure wherever our product is, because, like, if it topples and breaks, that would suck. And then we fit all our votives away.
We've ... Um, I always go and try to chase down the bride and the bridal bouquet vases, uh, the bridesmaid bouquet vases, because realistically, they don't ... You know, I, I have a rental price included in my bouquets, not a buy price, 'cause they're now, like, almost, like, $5 to get one. So I go and do one last sweep of, um, you know, making sure I'm getting the bouquet vases, and then we kinda go from there, and we start strategically packing.
So I had torn down an arch. The arch goes in first on the bottom of the floor. Then we packed like-sized totes together. Then we packed like size, like, lower underbed storage boxes, and everything fit in there magically. And then any buckets that were left or went with us, those were all made sure that they were secured by other, you know, kind of like totes to make sure that if we went around a corner, they did not kind of crash over.
So I hope these little tips and tricks were helpful in your tear-down process or in your ne- next tear-down period. Thank you so much for listening, flower friend, and you have an amazing flower-filled day.