“How’d You Get Into Florals?”

Well, in order to really answer this I’ll have to jump in the way-way-back machine. When did I fall in love with flowers? Well, it appears the answer is: REALLY early!

Yep, that’s me (the big baby in the carrier) next to my sister in front of our parents’ hydrangea bushes outside our childhood home.

Or when my grandmother sewed me a custom flower costume for Halloween in 1996.

I didn’t come from a florist family like a lot of florists do, but flowers and plants were always a part of my life. My jam was the performing arts. I studied Musical Theatre in college and worked professionally in theatre as an actor and singer (and pretty bad dancer) for the first half of my twenties.
[My favorite roles I’ve played are Juliet in Romeo & Juliet and Kayleen in Gruesome Playground Injuries]

Taken by Carla McDonald during my year working as an Associate Company Member at a theatre in Memphis

As I hit my mid-twenties, though, I faced a classic quarter-life crisis. I loved acting, I loved theatre, but I just couldn’t see myself doing it professionally forever. Part of it is that I knew it would always be an uphill climb; even Broadway stars go back to auditioning once their show closes. The part of me that craves stability just couldn’t stomach the thought of being “old” (probably, in my head at the time, 40) and still wondering where my next paycheck would come from. I had committed to a masters program in acting, and I backed out a month before I was supposed to start- yikes! Not a great look, but I knew it wasn’t the right move for me.

Then one night, I saw an Instagram story that in many ways changed the trajectory of my life:

Yes, I still have the screenshot saved! My now-husband was sitting next to me and urged me to apply (when I vaguely said, “I will! This weekend…,” he was like “no, do it right now!” and the rest is history).

I started at Stems Brooklyn as an unpaid apprentice just to learn the basics.

Here’s a picture I took of myself in the bathroom on my first day, probably one second after I learned how to process a rose:

For the next few months, I basically was like “can I hang out here for free and learn everything about floristry?” It seemed to me a better deal than paying thousands for flower school, and the chance to learn on the job was invaluable.

By that summer, I knew I was hooked. When a role opened up in the shop at Stems, I quit my job and became a paid employee. Simultaneously, I started freelancing for other floral studios, so that I could try my hand at event work. I charged a VERY low freelancing rate to reflect my lack of experience and treated it like job training.

What I learned was that I LOVED weddings- something about the fast pace of a wedding production day reminded me of theatre: all the different vendors working together in the same way that the costume designers, scenic crew, actors, and lighting techs all make a production come together.

The day you acquire a toolbelt is the day you become unf-ckwithable as a florist.

I started taking my own events later that year (that’s a whole other story for another blog post)- remind me to post photos of the 2019 baby’s christening party I designed!

Eventually, when my dear friend and mentor Zara left her longtime position as the head of the weddings department at Stems, I took over. For the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons, I had the absolute privilege of working with dozens of couples, planners, and families on some of the most important days of their lives.

My focus was pushing our focus on sustainability even further- I partnered us with several flower co-ops, where we could access flowers from dozens of farms in one fell swoop. Our weddings during the growing season boasted as much as 90% local flowers! I got to dream up so many amazing installations, all using foam-free mechanics, and became a better designer and a better leader than I was when I started.

I’m so proud of the work I did there, and I’m forever thankful that I had such rich soil in which I could grow and blossom as a person and a florist.

My last wedding with Stems- a gorgeous Indian fusion wedding at The Foundry in Long Island City.

In 2025, six years after diving into floristry, I officially launched Imogen Floral, my own studio. A year later, I’m thrilled to say we had a glorious first year. Lovely, trusting couples, amazing planners, and tons of locally sourced flowers- who could ask for more?

I started my own business to bring my love of romantic, lush floral design to more couples- and to show the world that sustainable floristry doesn’t look any one way. Local flowers can be elevated and luxurious; we don’t have to sacrifice aesthetics in order to show care for our earth and the future of our planet.

Thanks for being here, dreamers!

A Color Theory Challenge: Designing Florals for the Pantone Color of the Year

I recently had the opportunity to collaborate with a ton of industry professionals on a fabulous styled shoot and wanted to peel back the layers of a styled shoot: to highlight both the positives of a creative exercise like this while also exploring the challenges, particularly color-wise, of designing around a specific theme.

Ikiya, the owner of Intimate Occasions by Ikiya, Michelle, owner of Wandermore Photography, and I linked up early this year with the idea to do a shoot that would feel like a creative exercise in our slow season. We quickly got to brainstorming- what would the theme be? Where would we focus our design efforts? Since it was January when we began planning, it seemed like a no-brainer to design a shoot around Pantone’s Color of the Year: Mocha Mousse.

If you’re not familiar with the concept of the color of the year, here’s a quick primer: each year, Pantone releases their “Color of the Year”- a color meant to be emblematic of the trends in fashion, interiors, and the larger cultural zeitgeist. Last year we got the bright and juicy “Peach Fuzz,” and this year was followed by the warm and rich “Mocha Mousse.”

As a florist, I was excited by the challenge- but I also knew right away how much of a struggle it would be to design a color palette of florals around a color that doesn’t occur in nature frequently! Sure, if you filter by “brown” on your wholesaler’s website, a lot will come up- but as one of my studio’s values, I don’t design using dyed flowers, as the chemicals can be harmful for the environment and those flowers generally can’t be composted back to the earth.

So here’s how I approached it: the mocha mousse color would serve as a touchstone for the project, anchoring all the textile goods (table linens, ceremony drapery, etc) and rentals (chairs, plates, utensils), and the florals would feature colors that complement mocha mousse, without necessarily being so literal as to include the color itself.

Check out my design deck here:

My initial color palette, accompanied by a sketch I did of a potential ceremony design and several inspiration images from other florists.

As you can see, I decided to focus on the colors that would naturally lead into a deep, rich brown: creamy ivories, soft peach tones, and deepening orange hues. It was important to me that the designs felt lush, romantic, and feminine, featuring lots of soft, round blooms and bouncy textures. My goal was to complement the somewhat masculine vibe of the mocha mousse color with softer hues and tones. 

Here’s how I pulled that together into a floral inspiration board:

A floral inspiration board is always just that: inspiration. I try to craft mine with seasonal availability in mind, but the main goal is to convey the types of textures and colors I’ll be using in the design. The only “must-have” element for me here was the dried bracken fern- I really wanted that rich brown color and interesting texture, so I ordered some to come shipped from California. Out of the rest of the florals, many of the blooms on this board weren’t available the week of the shoot! Part of event floristry is staying on your toes and making it work.

Without further ado, here are some shots of how it all came together:

Flat lay put together by Wandermore Photography- peep the date pods that were an impulse buy at the flower market and totally brought everything together!

Gorgeous Kristen and her bouquet, shot by Wandermore Photography. Check out the gestural bracken fern- so worth shipping it in from California!

Don’t sleep on a pocket boutonniere- when else do you get to wear a mini garden in your suit jacket?!

Deconstructed ceremony design, featuring a deep mousse fabric for styling.

Lush florals accented by pears, date pods, and nuts really seal the deal on the vibe we were going for.

Full Vendor List:

Venue - Carroll Hall

Planner - Intimate Occasions By Ikiya⁠

Photographer - Wandermore Photography⁠

Floral Design + Styling - Imogen Floral

Couple - @kristenmariecastro @nosliw.jpeg⁠

MUA - Beauty Lyn

Hairstylist - Zully.nyc & @texis_claudia⁠

Officiant - Once Upon A Vow⁠

Content Creator - All The Love nyc⁠

Tabletop Rentals - Squiggle Rentals⁠

Chair Rentals - A1partynyc⁠

Stationary - Carrie Lapolla⁠

Dresses - Rebecca Schoneveld Bridal⁠

Suit - Generation Tux⁠

Baker - Buttermilk Bakeshop⁠

Bar Cart - Mobile Bar nyc

Number One Tip for Wedding Bouquets That You Probably Don’t Know

If you’re holding a bouquet on your wedding day, it may very well be the first time you’re holding a bouquet of flowers for an extended period of time! Maybe you’ve received flowers for Valentine’s Day or you’ve even put together some grocery store flowers, but there is one really big tip that you may not be aware of, and it’s this:

Keep. Your. Bouquet. In. Water!

That’s right. Anytime you’re not actively holding your bouquet for photos or during the ceremony, it should go right back into the vase of water it was delivered in.

Forever Photography

Why?

By the time these flowers are in your hands on your wedding day, they were cut in a field anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks ago, possibly shipped across an ocean in a plane, received by your florist, processed (that means trimming excess leaves off, conditioning them for use), and designed prior to your wedding day. (Side note: this is why local flowers are the best! They were probably cut a lot closer to your wedding day and haven’t been traveling excess distances to get to you, making them a lot healthier!)

These poor flowers are TIRED! A good florist will have been keeping them cool, trimming the ends daily to ensure they keep drinking water, and making sure they’re in optimal condition on your wedding day. Often, this means timing out different farm deliveries to ensure all the different varieties of flowers are at peak bloom by the time they’re in your bouquet.

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One of the worst variables for flowers is heat, and human hands are hot. You know how when you hold something for a while, your hands sometimes get warm or sweaty? That body heat can cause your flowers to wilt faster!

If you’re having an outdoor wedding in the summer, this is even more true; body heat combined with environmental heat is a recipe for a wilted wedding bouquet! There’s nothing sadder than designing a gorgeous bouquet for an August bride and then seeing it later in the day, completely wilted from the 90 degree heat.

So what can you do? Well, hopefully your florist delivered your bouquet in a vase with water! If they didn’t, any glass of water will do. Designate a bridesmaid or a friend to grab your blooms anytime they’re laying on a table somewhere and put them back into water. This way, your flowers will look stunning all night AND as an extra bonus-if you’re having your bouquet preserved or dried, it will look even better in its forever form. 

Wandermore Photography (for Stems Brooklyn)

Take this tip with you on your wedding day and enjoy your flowers all night. Happy planning!

How Planning My Own Wedding Made Me a Better Wedding Florist

If you’re planning your own wedding right now (or if you plan to be engaged soon!), you probably are feeling something like excitement mixed with overwhelm mixed with YIKES THAT’S WHAT THAT COSTS?? For many of us, this is the first time we’ve planned a huge event, navigating catering and menus and linens and arrival times and transportation and flowers and dress fittings and and and….

Now, maybe you’re an ultra fancy person who plans lots of large-scale events and this is all old hat for you. If that’s the case- go on with your bad self! You’re amazing! 

But for many couples planning a wedding, this is a whole new world. You might have hosted a dinner party for ten people or had a Bat Mitzvah, so you know there are a lot of logistics that go into hosting. Multiply that for however many guests you’re having and you start to understand exponentially how much more challenging it will be to plan and host a wedding.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I loved a LOT of the wedding planning process! I got engaged right in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, so we picked a wedding date nearly two years out in 2022 to have plenty of time to plan. One thing that was invaluable to my now-husband and me was sitting down early on to identify the three most important elements of a wedding- this way, whenever things got overwhelming or we faced decision fatigue, we could return to those three core values and decide whether whatever we were stressing about served those goals. 

For us, we actually both separately picked the exact same three elements: good food/drink, alone time together, and a fun dance party. Those were our tethers. This led us to some of our major decisions like investing in a venue that allowed us to custom create a menu with the in-house chef, including signature cocktails that reflected both of our personalities.

Forever Photography

Deciding on what to do about my wedding florals was a journey. Upon first getting engaged, I had the stellar idea to do my own wedding flowers; thank goodness I had several florist friends ask me if I was insane and realized that yes, I’d probably rather be sipping a glass of bubbly on the morning of my wedding and not building a chuppah. Luckily, I was able to still design the concept for all the wedding elements myself ahead of time, and I hired some floral designer friends to do the actual set up and execution. These friends were true rockstars, because they somehow managed to set up an entire wedding and then transform into wedding guests by the evening!

Forever Photography

From a budget perspective and an Earth perspective, sustainability was huge for us in our wedding planning! Here are a couple sustainable ways we designed our wedding:

1. Sourcing rugs from Facebook marketplace & Craigslist for the aisle.

This look was so important to us, so we spent months sourcing these one at a time. On the day of, they became our wedding aisle, then our venue amazingly flipped them into a dance floor. After the wedding, I sold them as a “complete aisle bundle” to another bride on a local wedding group.. Win win!

2. Pressing flowers for escort cards.

I saved flower heads from work and pressed them in books for months! I did end up sourcing some more pressed flowers from the amazing Lacie at Framed Florals, and the look was so special.

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Bonus: I dried my own flowers at home for individual dried flower bundles at each place setting. 

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3. Drying flowers for confetti.

For two years, I meticulously dried petals from flower heads that came off in processing or normal design, focusing on high saturation flowers like marigold, delphinium, and strawflower. When the wedding got closer, I made paper cones and we gave these out to our guests for tossing at the end of our ceremony.

4. Donating our flowers after our event.

Luckily, our venue, Spillian, had a connection to a local organization, so we didn’t have to do much legwork on this. A couple great folks came during our brunch the day after our wedding, seamlessly rescued whatever flowers still looked beautiful, and took them to local nursing homes and hospitals. This was in the Catskills, but there are fabulous organizations like Bloom Again Brooklyn that do this exact kind of work here!
Our wedding flowers got to have a second life, and that made my heart so happy.

Forever Photography

Of course, there were a lot of less exciting elements to wedding planning, but it’s all part of the ride. We had a gorgeous day surrounded by our closest family and friends, and the most important takeaway was that it felt like us. This is what I always stress to the couples I work with: create something that feels like an organic extension of you two and the love you share, and it’ll always be a day you remember with warmth and love.

Happy planning!

Current Color Palette Obsession

Maybe it’s the impending arrival of spring, maybe it’s that Valentine’s Day just passed, maybe it’s that I recently saw the movie Babygirl and the branding was on POINT, but there is one color palette I can’t stop obsessing over:

the coquette palette.

A selection from my time at Stems Brooklyn. Photo by April Massey.

Admittedly, this isn’t a new or particularly groundbreaking palette (cue Meryl Streep asking “florals? For spring? Groundbreaking ”), but when done well, it’s OH so good. Think romance, ribbons, silks, highly decorated retro cakes, and then all of it brought together by flowers.

A selection from my time at Stems Brooklyn. Photo by Christian Oth Studio.

A coquette palette typically features what I like to think of as “elevated pastels”: soft robin’s egg blue, creamy whites, blush pinks, heightened by the occasional more saturated tone (a deeper violet, maybe). A buttery yellow might make an appearance. The key is keeping all the tones in their softest shades and choosing your deeper colors wisely. Adding in these pops of colors keeps this palette from looking too much like a baby shower (unless, of course, you’re throwing a baby shower- then go as soft as you like!).

A selection from my time at Stems Brooklyn. Photo by April Massey.

The shapes of our flowers matter here, too; when we think of this Babygirl-style palette, we’re using mostly round, soft blooms, prioritizing flowers that are fluffy, delicate, and allow for more of a garden-style look. Tropicals and drippy amaranth would change this vibe considerably, so save those for a more minimal, modern aesthetic.

A selection from my time at Stems Brooklyn. Photo by April Massey.

To me, this is a quintessential spring/summer palette. That’s not to say you can’t do it in other seasons, it just means that, if we’re leading with seasonality, the types of flowers that tend to lend themselves well to this style are most often available in the early- to mid-growing season in our region (NY, NJ, Western Massachusetts). You could even do this whole palette with completely local flowers (roses included!). Here are a few of my favorite coquette-esque blooms:

Garden roses- these were grown right in New Jersey!

Pink foxglove (the purple dalmatian variety is also beautiful, but I’m a sucker for the blush pink).

Phlox (this bloom does NOT smell great, but sure is pretty).

Local sweet pea, in all its tendril-y glory

Scabiosa (this comes in so many different hues that you can use it as a cool pop or a buttery warm tone)

These are just a handful of the florals and shades you can use to bring this sweet palette to life; don’t forget some blush stock, Peaches & Cream dahlias, and light blue delphinium. This vibe is perfect for your wedding- or your next garden party, shower, or afternoon soiree.

Hope you loved this deep-dive into my current color palette obsession as much as I did! Wishing you lots of ribbon-filled garden parties in the near future. Xoxo