Custom Flowers Don't Have to Mean Expensive: Our Website Is Just the Beginning

When you visit The BloomBox website, you'll find a pretty extensive selection of flower arrangements. It's essentially our catalogue: a collection of designs we make regularly, representing different styles, occasions, colours, sizes and budgets. Every floral arrangement pictured on our website is our own work, created and photographed right here in our Brandon shop, but as extensive as the selection may seem, it represents only a fraction of what we've created over the years and an even smaller fraction of what we're capable of creating.

It simply wouldn't be practical to put everything online. After decades of designing flowers, the number of possibilities would be enormous, and thousands of choices wouldn't necessarily make ordering easier. In fact, it would probably make it considerably harder. We've curated the website to showcase some of our most popular work, provide a good representation of what we do and give customers an easy place to start. Think of the website as our catalogue, not a list of our limitations.

"Custom" Doesn't Automatically Mean "More Expensive"

We think the word custom has developed an unfortunate reputation because custom often sounds expensive. Mention a custom house, custom furniture or a custom-built vehicle and it's reasonable to assume you're about to spend considerably more money. That can certainly happen with flowers too. If you want something enormous, exceptionally complicated or made with particularly rare or expensive flowers, the price will naturally reflect that. But that's not what custom usually means to us.

For us, custom simply means we're creating something specifically for you. We're still using flowers from the same suppliers, they're arriving on the same trucks, and they're being designed by the same people in the same shop. A rose doesn't suddenly cost more because we're using it in an arrangement that isn't pictured on our website. A $75 custom arrangement can still be a $75 arrangement; we're simply creating it specifically for your order rather than reproducing one of the designs you've seen online.

Even "special ordering" flowers doesn't usually mean paying a premium. We receive regular shipments of fresh flowers, so most of the time we're simply adding what we need for your arrangement onto an order we're already placing. When those flowers arrive, they're marked for your particular order and considered spoken for. In most cases there isn't an additional cost simply because we specifically ordered that flower for you.

Sometimes creating something specifically for you will cost more because what you've asked us to create costs more, but custom itself isn't an upgrade charge.

Of Course, Mother Nature Gets a Vote

There are exceptions, particularly when someone wants a very specific flower outside its normal availability. Peonies are a great example. They're highly seasonal, and during much of the year they're simply unavailable through our normal suppliers. There are limited circumstances when we may be able to source them from a premium grower somewhere else in the world, but that's a very different kind of special order. Additional shipping, limited availability and premium product can result in those flowers costing two or three times what they might during their normal season.

There are a handful of other flowers and situations where something similar can happen, which is another reason talking to us can be useful. If something isn't available, is prohibitively expensive or simply isn't a great choice at that particular time of year, we can usually suggest alternatives that accomplish much the same thing. If your heart is absolutely set on the original flower and we think we can get it, we'll explain what's involved and let you decide whether it's worth it.

Custom design isn't about automatically reaching for the most expensive option. It's about figuring out the best way to create what you're asking for within the budget and parameters we're working with.

Sometimes Our Best Work Starts With Very Little Direction

You don't need to walk into the shop carrying a photograph of exactly what you want. In fact, some of our favourite custom projects begin with very little direction. Tell us about the person, give us an occasion, a favourite colour, a hobby, a memory or an idea. Tell us what you want the flowers to accomplish and, whenever possible, give us a little time to think, plan and order anything we might need. Then give our designers some freedom to figure out the rest.

Maybe you're celebrating a special anniversary and would like us to recreate the feeling of someone's wedding flowers from years ago. We may not be able to reproduce every flower exactly, particularly if the original wedding happened during a different season, but photographs, memories and a little information can give us what we need to create something that brings those wedding flowers back to life in a new way.

Perhaps it's a ten-year-old's birthday and they're absolutely obsessed with Spider-Man. There probably isn't going to be a "Spider-Man Bouquet" sitting on our website, but that doesn't mean we can't have some fun with the idea. Maybe you want a showstopper that makes someone stop in their tracks when it arrives, or perhaps you want something small, personal and unique that simply lets somebody know you're thinking about them. Both are custom designs, and they can exist at completely different price points.

Custom isn't a size or a price point. It's creating something for a particular person and a particular moment, and often our best work happens when someone gives us enough information to understand what they're trying to accomplish without dictating every flower and every detail.

Weddings, Events and Memorials Are Where Custom Can Really Shine

Custom design becomes especially interesting with weddings and events. There will always be trends in wedding flowers, and sometimes they're wonderful sources of inspiration. If you love what's currently popular, we'll happily work with it, but your wedding doesn't have to look like everyone else's wedding simply because a particular style is filling social media at the moment.

We love wedding and event projects that give us an opportunity to create something reflecting the personalities of the people we're designing for. Tell us what you like, what you don't like, what you want the room to feel like and what makes the event yours. Sometimes the result is soft and romantic, sometimes contemporary and architectural, and sometimes it's colourful, unusual and completely different from what everyone else is currently doing. We've also worked on large-scale projects where flowers become part of the environment itself, including flowers suspended overhead that appear to be floating in the air. Those aren't designs that make sense as products on a website. They're projects that begin with a conversation and an idea.

Some of the most meaningful custom pieces we've created have been memorial flowers. Over the years, families have trusted us to incorporate hobbies, interests, personal belongings and little pieces of someone's life into their flowers. We've created pieces involving everything from fishing and golf to cars, music and sports. Those arrangements aren't created simply to make something unusual; they're created because the person being remembered was unique, and the flowers should be able to say something about who they were.

When a family trusts us to incorporate those personal details into the flowers used to remember someone they loved, we consider it an honour. Those designs aren't necessarily supposed to be repeated or added to our website for someone else to purchase. They were created for one particular person, and that's custom floral design at its most personal.

Custom Can Be an Entire Room—or One Rose

Another misconception about custom work is that it needs to be elaborate. We can certainly do elaborate. Give us a space, some time to plan and the opportunity to get creative and we can create large floral installations, statement arrangements and pieces intended to completely transform an event. We've created everything from traditional bouquets and centrepieces to flowers hanging overhead that appear to float in the air.

At the other end of the scale, custom can be a single rose. One beautiful rose, expertly dressed and wrapped, with your own personal message attached before it's hand delivered to someone's door, can say exactly what needs to be said. It doesn't need another fifty stems around it to become meaningful. If that one rose perfectly represents the gesture you wanted to make, then it has done its job just as successfully as an entire room filled with flowers.

That's the range of what we do, from an all-out celebration transformed with flowers to one carefully prepared bloom being delivered to someone's door, and just about everything in between.

You Can Still Give Us Creative Freedom When Ordering Online

Of course, we know people don't always think about ordering flowers while we're standing beside the phone or the shop is open. We want you to be able to order on your schedule, not ours, which is one of the reasons we created our Flowers By Feeling option.

Flowers By Feeling is essentially a way of having part of the same conversation online that we'd have if you called or stopped in. It asks some of the questions we'd normally ask about the recipient, occasion, style and feeling you're trying to convey, giving our designers enough information to create something appropriate without requiring you to choose a specific arrangement from a photograph. It can even help guide you toward an appropriate budget. It's particularly useful when you know you want to send flowers but don't know what kind, colour or style would be best, or when you're ordering after hours and still want something created specifically with the recipient in mind.

Our Website Is a Starting Point, Not a Limitation

If you see an arrangement on our website that you love, order it. Those designs are some of our most popular work and we've put them there specifically to make ordering easy. But if you've looked through the website and can't find exactly what you have in mind, don't assume that means we can't make it. The website shows you a curated selection of what we've already created; it doesn't begin to show everything we could create.

Call us, stop in, or use Flowers By Feeling if you're ordering online and want to give our designers some creative freedom. You don't need to know the names of the flowers, understand floral design or arrive with a perfectly developed idea. Tell us who it's for, why you're sending it, what you know about them, what you want to spend and anything else you think might help us understand what you're trying to accomplish.

After decades of working with flowers, we have the experience and expertise to take it from there. Sometimes that means recreating a treasured memory. Sometimes it means creating something completely new. Sometimes it's a room full of flowers, and sometimes it's a single rose with exactly the right message attached.

Our website can show you what we've already made. What we'd really love to know is what we can create for you.

Fresh. Unique. Flowers. It's What We Do!