For many, part of the wedding day is being surrounded by glorious flowers and lovely arrangements that make their special day both beautiful and fragrant. For Sherry Spencer, owner of Southern Blooms, being surrounded by flowers is her daily life—and very much a family thing.
“I grew up among flowers,” says Spencer. Her mother, in a time when women didn’t commonly work outside the home, was raising her children when a friend asked her to help in his floral shop. “When he died, he left her the business,” Spencer recalls. “I grew up helping out.”
Going into business with her mother wasn’t Spencer’s original plan. She went to college expecting to major in voice, but found the exclusive and competitive opera world wasn’t her métier. Spencer came home and did some work in interior design, while also helping her mother at the shop. And then she saw an opportunity.
“At that time, [florists] around here weren’t doing weddings; people were mostly ordering arrangements from FTD,” she recalls. “In 1998, we did a floral bridal fair, and the business started blowing up after that.”
The following year, Spencer became a full-time partner with her mother. Everyone in the family has contributed—Spencer’s brother, who has an MBA, anticipated the 2008 downturn and “told us we needed to recession-proof the business by doing less retail and more events.” Their timing was perfect: “The wedding scene in Charlottesville started to boom—with King [Family] Vineyards, Pippin Hill, Keswick Hall—and now 90 percent of our business is referrals.”
Why the name Southern Blooms? Spencer describes her arrangements as garden-style, which means using an abundance of flowers and plant material in a way that’s consistent with their nature. Back in the day (when her mother first started working in the floral shop), floral arrangements were very formal and structured, with an eye toward durability more than seasonality. Spencer credits Martha Stewart for inspiration: “She was changing what people thought of as beautiful floral arrangements.”
Spencer’s mother’s sister, a window designer, helped them both think more about colors and shapes. “She told my mom, ‘Look at a fern and how it grows. Let the flowers speak; don’t try to force them.’ And that’s become what my mother says now: ‘Flowers have a voice, you have to let them be heard.’” (Spencer’s mother, Pat Roberts, has stepped back from the day-to-day business, but is still very much a part of the company’s style and approach—and Spencer’s daughter Jordan now makes Southern Blooms a third-generation business.)
Spencer finds that her ‘flower first’ approach suits the current looser and freer floral styles. Her designs will often complement the locale the couple has chosen. “We have lots of classic Virginia-style venues here, like vineyards,” she notes, but she also has done more contemporary styles, or an all-white wedding—even “a Florida vibe with palm trees” for one couple.
Then there are the trends. Five years ago, huge bridal bouquets were all the rage; then the pendulum swung back to smaller, gathered, garden-style bouquets. “Last year, we saw more requests for tiny bouquets using lily-of-the-valley, which are lovely, but the blooms are only available here for one week in April,” says Spencer. “And they’re so small one bouquet takes hundreds of them.”
The latest trends: floral dresses for bridesmaids, which from Spencer’s perspective means “one-color bouquets, or else it’s too distracting.” And more couples are thinking less is more: Southern Blooms, like many wedding vendors, has seen clients pulling back on over-the-top weddings in line with economic swings.
But the key to Spencer’s approach is still the flowers themselves—what’s in season, what works together, what speaks to her and her client’s vision. “There are so many different ways to use flowers,” she says. “That’s what I love about what I do.”
Photo: Jen Fariello
