Yes, the economy could be wilting, with signs of droop on many fronts. On the other wrist–as they say–there is one business that is all but recession-proof. It is the nation’s wedding florists.
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For them, January is like kabloom!
“It’s like this,” began Jim Harney, the head of Aberdeen Wedding Flowers, the city’s largest weddings-only florist at 3829 N. Harlem Av., close to O’Hare International Airport where the flowers of many lands enter this country.
“The holidays are when people give rings,” he went on, describing a social ritual that, in many cases, begins with one partner on a bended knee. That’s in December. Then, in January, comes what Harney describes as a major rush, usually led by the other partner–to book a banquet hall, a church, a band and, of course, a florist.
“Some nights you can’t get into the store,” he said. “All five order tables are busy–and there’s a line outside.”
Nor is it any calmer these days at his nine other locations, from Oak Lawn to Schaumburg.
Marital unions have become one of life’s major expenses, with the costs–for gowns, food, entertainment, hotel space and flowers–now running about the same as the purchase of a car. Each year, the nation kisses $35 billion goodbye at weddings, an average of about $16,000 per blessed event.
Of that, flowers usually run from $750 to $3,000 or so, though it is possible to be excessive, as were Jennifer Aniston and William Bradley Pitt, two actors who were recently married on the West Coast.
The pair reportedly spent a fortune to bring together 200 guests on a five-acre Malibu bluff decorated with 50,000 flowers in and around tents lit with lanterns and brown sugar candles flown in from Thailand. Inside, tables were set with roses, wisteria and tulips. Outside, lotus flowers floated in a specially built slate fountain.
“Brad,” one floral assistant confided to friends, “wanted the Zen garden look.”
“Whatever,” said Harney, bringing out a scrapbook with pictures of some of his own Big Ones.
They have included the weddings of hockey player Stan Mikita, baseball player Glenn Beckert, a son of Mayor Richard J. Daley, a daughter of Malcolm X, a daughter of President Richard Nixon, radio personality Wally Phillips, and Mary Curran, a dance instructor from Elmwood Park whose bridal party included her students: 134 girls in matching gowns.
It’s been 43 years and roughly 150,000 weddings since Harney went out on his own after an apprenticeship, starting in the business when he was a teenager as a sweeper, then a stemmer, a bouquet-maker and finally a floral designer.
“What’s great about this business is that there is rarely a slump,” he said. “When daddy’s little girl gets married, there’s nothing too good for her.” That also, he noted, went for NBC and Tiny Tim.
It was Harney who supplied 10,000 tulips to NBC’s “Tonight Show” for the Dec. 17, 1969, on-air wedding of Tim and Miss Vicki, a teenager Tim had met while signing autographs in a department store. Harney wangled the contract, with the help of WGN’s Wally Phillips, after he had cornered the market on off-season tulips in Holland.
Tulips were, of course, the flower of choice, given Tim’s hit, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” in falsetto.
“We spent two days there setting up 5,000 tulips for the show, another 5,000 for the reception,” recalled Harney. He had the flowers shipped to New York, borrowed quarters from a wholesale florist and, with much help, frantically fashioned the bulbs into displays that “delighted Johnny Carson”–and an estimated 40 million viewers.
Less successful were the weddings he booked in early 1967, at the time of Chicago’s Big Snow.
“Of all the weddings we planned, only one took place,” Harney recalled. “It was around the corner, at St. Priscilla’s, on Irving Park Road. We walked the flowers over there. The bride and groom were the only ones who showed up.”
So, what’s fresh in bloom for brides this year?
“New this year–it’s the Water Bouquet,” said Harney, who oversees 125 workers on Thursdays and Fridays as they shape flowers from around the world into wedding arrangements, filling half a dozen long work tables.
“It’s a great way to save money at the reception,” he explained. “The bouquets carried by the wedding party have a small handle. It comes off, turns around and becomes a pedestal, for centerpieces. I have a patent on it.”
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Look for many of them soon at a banquet hall near you.