Marisol Okonjo-Reyes & Bea Halloran · Owners & Florists
Eleven weddings out of a barn, and then a lease.
Marisol came out of restaurant work — nine years of front of house and then two running events for a hotel group — and left because of the waste. Four hundred dollars of imported stems into a dumpster on a Sunday morning, week after week, was the thing she could not get past.
Bea grew up on a cut-flower farm in Madison County and went to school for hydrology, which she still says was not a mistake. She knows what a field looks like three weeks before it is ready, and she can tell you on the phone whether a grower is being optimistic.
They met doing flowers for a mutual friend's wedding in 2017, mostly by accident and mostly badly. The following year they did eleven weddings out of Bea's mother's barn, driving buckets in the back of a Corolla with the seats down. They have turned work away every year since 2023.
Today it is still the two of them, plus two seasonal assistants from May to October. Every proposal is written by one of them and every job is delivered by both.
We buy from people we can drive to.
Seasonal crew
Two more pairs of hands, May to October.
Isadora Whitlock
Seasonal Florist
Fourth season with us. Faster at boutonnières than either of us and will say so.
Emmett Ruiz-Bagley
Seasonal Florist & Install
Does the installs and the driving. Has never once complained about a 5am load-in, which is unnatural.
How we got here
Eight years, five that mattered.
2018
Eleven weddings out of a barn
Bea's mother's barn in Madison County, one borrowed cooler, and a Corolla with the back seats permanently down. Every one of the eleven was someone we knew.
2020
Everything cancels, so we grow
Thirty-one weddings postponed or cancelled in nine weeks. We spent the year putting three quarters of an acre into production and learning what we could actually grow here.
2021
The Riverside Drive lease and the cold room
A converted garage, a second-hand walk-in cooler, and the first year we could condition properly instead of hoping. It changed the work more than anything else on this list.
2023
First year turning work away
Twenty-eight weddings booked and about forty enquiries we could not take. The year we decided one wedding a weekend was the rule and not the aspiration.
2026
Forty weddings and a second van
Plus around sixty events, six weekly accounts, and a workshop most months. Still the two of us writing every proposal.
Inside
The place itself.
The cold room
The bench
Buckets
The wall of vessels
Ribbon spools
The van
The back door, 5am
This week's jobs
Questions
Things people ask about the studio.
Can we visit the studio?
Yes, and we would rather you did. Tue–Fri, 9am to 4pm, by appointment — we are usually elbow-deep in something, so turning up unannounced means we cannot give you any attention. Saturdays in May, June, September and October we are at a venue, not here.
Do you grow your own?
About fifteen percent of what we use, on three quarters of an acre in Madison County — mostly the things that travel badly: sweet pea, cosmos, feverfew, some dahlia. The rest comes from eleven growers within ninety minutes, and for about six weeks in late winter, from importers we will name.
What do you do with the flowers afterwards?
If we are doing same-night breakdown, whatever is still good goes to Mission Hospital or one of two care homes on the Monday. What is finished gets composted at the farm. Chicken wire, vessels and candle plates come back to the studio and get reused. Almost nothing goes in the dumpster, which was the whole point.
Are you hiring?
Two seasonal positions, May to October, posted in February. Long days, early starts, honest pay, and you will learn to condition properly. Email us any time of year and we will keep it.
Do you sell arrangements walk-in?
No — everything is by order. We are not a shop and we do not keep a cooler full of stems waiting for someone to want them. Order by Thursday for a Friday or Saturday pickup, or ask about a weekly account.