“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!

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.

Forever Photography

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

Forever Photography

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!