Wedding in Sacramento California January 9, 2010

Winter weddings warm our hearts during these cold, cloudy, dark and dreary days. We haven't noticed the cloudy days the last few days because we were busy preparing for the wedding and the Martin Luther King celebration at the Convention Center. The wedding was about the same time as the MLK event but the flowers for the wedding party were needed in the morning for picture taking, and the flowers for the reception were delivered at the Commons Clubhouse on our way to St. Mark's Methodist Church to deliver the church decorations, pew bows, and unity candles. The flowers and decorations for MLK were needed at 2 p.m. for the 5:30 event. We helped set up the garlands, the centerpieces and the green plants and finally left after an hour and a half. It was an exhausting but a very fulfilled day.

Congratulations to Ruthie and Mark, our best wishes to you both. I am personally amazed at Becky for her work on the bouquets and was very glad to have her work with me. Becky came all the way from Atlantic City, New Jersey to help with her niece's wedding flowers. I met Becky on a forum for florists, and I feel blessed to have met her in person and help her out on this very special occasion, one which I am sure will be remembered by her family here in Sacramento.

New Year, New Decade, New beginnings, a New Way of Life

Happy New Year to everyone! As we look forward to a new year and a new decade, most of us resolve to improve our lives by making new year's resolutions either to quit bad habits or addictions, or a change of lifestyle for the better.

The year that's behind us seem to have gone so fast and the economy gone downhill and the only item going up was unemployment. And with that, we've had to adjust to a new way of life.

The author, H. Jackson Brown Jr. compiled and created over 500 axioms of counsel and personal observation that he hoped would provide a road map for his college bound son. Here are a few that seem particularly appropriate for us all to add to our new year's resolutions:

1. Complement 3 people every day.
2. Look people in the eye.
3. Say "thank you" a lot.
4. Live beneath your means.
5. Never refuse homemade brownies.
6. Surprise loved ones with little unexpected gifts.
7. Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring and integrity, they think of you.
8. Admit your mistakes.
9. Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
10 Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it's just a daisy in a jelly glass!
11. Pray not for things, but for wisdom and courage.
12. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
13. Never eat the last cookie.
14. Call your mother.

Added to my own list: Be more informed about your government to make sure that democracy prevails and our freedoms preserved not taken away by the government.

Here's to a joyful, peaceful, and hopeful new decade.
Happy New Year!

A Vanity Fair is a Favorite Place on Google

We're so pleased to get a packet from Google declaring and congratulating us for being a favorite place that people searched for and requested driving directions and other information about us - a real local Sacramento florist.

We have a window decal with a special bar code that any customer can scan with their phone cameras, i.e., iphone or Droid to get more information about our flower shop. Better yet, after scanning our bar code, come on in and get a free gift from us. This offer is good beginning now 12/16/2009 until 12/31/2009.
We worked hard to get recognized, and we thank our customers and those who found us on Google. Our heartfelt thanks to Google for this recognition. This is truly an early Merry Christmas!

Flowers, Food and Celebrations

Holidays are special occasions for friends and family - our loved ones to get together and catch up. It seems, during these special occasion of family and close friends gathering, flowers, food and celebrations have always been old companions as well. Creative centerpieces adorning dining tables make the gathering more festive, lively and very inviting. You can pick up beautifully and professionally designed centerpiece at your local florist. In Sacramento, if you want to stay indoors during the cold and dreary rainy day, call your local Sacramento florist to deliver your flowers.

During the hustle and bustle of the holiday preparations, we wish you all peace, joy, and love. And remember, for last minute gifts, call your local florist who can artistically put together a gift for a host or a loved one.

Flowers brighten, lengthen, life

A small arrangement was sent to a "seasoned" lady, a mixture of lavender stock that gave the display a very sweet scent, purple iris, purple lisianthus, novii belgii, a touch of yellow with the solidaster and bupleurum. Her fellow residents shared in her joy of receiving the gift of flowers, and in their awe of the beauty of the gift. This joy was really appreciated that she was compelled to give us a call to express her thanks for a beautiful gift of flowers.

I can imagine how these seasoned residents reacted, just like in a favorite children's mother goose rhyme "ring a ring o' roses", in their wheelchair, surrounded the recipient to look at the gift of flowers she received. The visual is funny, and gives us joy, the rewards of our work as a florist.

The Little Way

The Little Way

To scatter flowers! -- that means sacrifice:
My lightest sighs and pains, my heaviest, saddest hours,
My hopes, my joys, my prayers -- I will not count the price,
Behold my flowers!
To scatter flowers! --behold my chosen sword
for saving sinners' souls and filling Heaven's bowers:
The victory is mine - yes, I disarm Thee, Lord,
With these, my flowers!
- St. Therese of Lisieux

Funerals - When Someone You Know Dies

The floral business for everyday occasion has slowed down because of the economy, but lately, there has been a lot of last minute orders for sympathy flowers. Some of the customers that ordered flowers were relatives who were unable to attend the service. Some of our customers after taking care of the funeral arrangements realize the very last minute that they did not take care of flowers; so they order flowers at 10 a.m. for the 12 noon service. We've dealt with a lot of funerals lately where people order on the last minute because they see that there are very few flowers. On these occasions, we do not feel very sympathetic and are very removed of any feeling except the thought of making the floral arrangement very attractive for the service in the amount of time we have to work with.

But when someone you know dies, it is very different. The initial shock and the feeling of sympathy for the loved one left behind is hard to express. Someone I barely knew died and circumstances around his death is something I can't fathom how his loved ones must have felt. The distance could have created a barrier in helping out the loved ones left behind cope with their grief and the burden of making the final funeral arrangements. One friend, a fraternity brother, volunteered to collect contributions and with his sister took care of facilitating financial help from the mainland US to the Philippines. Technology has bridged the gap, and I really appreciate that it took fraternity/sorority brothers and sisters share in the grief of the loss of a big brother, the founder of the fraternity.

The death has brought together long lost frat brothers and sisters. Thank you Manong Glen!

Sacramento Florist - Change with the Economy

The last few months have become very challenging for small businesses like florists. Driving to work, it is very discomforting to see empty commercial spaces and large 'For Lease' signs on windows, and on the side of roads. Next to our shop, there used to be no parking space to be had; trucks and cars used to park on the street. In March, a large construction painting company just closed their shop and now there's a lot of empty parking spaces.

Our flower business is down by at least 20% for the first quarter of the year and it looks like it would be the same for the second quarter. Brides have become very cost conscious - those that came to us ordered only the basic flowers they needed - bridal bouquet, small bridesmaids bouquets, small corsages and boutonnieres, and loose flowers or rose petals that they will use for table decorations. We've had a few nice wedding business, but a lot fewer this year than last. We particularly loved the wedding we did last month where we did centerpieces including the guest sign-in table, food table and the ladies' bathroom. The chuppah was a challenge to make but in a good way.

The funeral business has also slowed down. Families have also become more cost conscious in their flower purchases. We had one family order loose flowers and materials for a relative to arrange the flowers for the service. Fortunately, there are still a few that we were able to do, a recent one were tropical arrangements for a funeral.

We have hunkered down, downsized as much as we are able to, and still continue to operate the business without going into debt. We are still able to pay our bills, mortgage for the shop and our residence. Still, the economy does not look good. In Sacramento, our economy depend so much on the government - it is the biggest employer, and with Friday furloughs, not only are the government employees affected, a lot of businesses are affected - restaurants, gift shops, etc.

We are hoping the economy improves, but if not, we will continue to watch our expenses, market our business the most economical way and hopefully find ways to do it for free, and find additional corporate accounts. We look for best pricing in flowers so that we can offer the best price to our customers. Our best asset will still be our customer service and our same day delivery service.

Local Florist in Sacramento, CA

We are in a challenging economic environment. A Vanity Fair Florist used to be located in a leased space in a strip mall in Citrus Heights on the corner of Auburn and Greenback Lane. During those years we were there, we were burglarized several times, along with cash, our cash register was stolen, door lock broken and had to be repaired, windows needed to be replaced. Any plant or item left outside the shop would disappear and after our lease was up, our lease was about to go up. Burglary on other businesses nearby was occurring quite often.

The bad economy also discouraged people to walk into a flower shop. Because of all these problems, we decided to buy our own commercial property - a little old house in a commercial lot situated between an office building and an auto repair shop and facing the FBI and the Sacramento Sheriff's department. Unfortunately, we bought it at the height of the real estate boom. We are now upside down on the property and cannot find financing to update the property as of yet. However, we are still a running business because we are able to operate with lower overhead. There used to be a very nice shop called Conroy's located not too far from us on Madison Ave. Another shop rented a nice location not too far from us on Auburn Blvd. is also shut down.And yet another flower shop located on Garfield Ave. is also long gone. The economy forced us to move to our humble location, still serving our old customers and people sending flowers to funerals at East Lawn Sierra Hills Cemetery and to Calvary Catholic Cemetery. We also deliver to Reichert's Funeral and Price Funeral Home in Citrus Heights. We service Merrill Gardens in Citrus Heights, CA, the Carmichael Oaks Retirement Home in Carmichael, CA, the Atria El Camino Gardens also in Carmichael, and others. We provide weekly flowers and flowers for special occasions. Aside from flowers, we have balloons, plush toys, silk flowers, candles, greeting cards, plants, baskets, and floral supplies.

There is a real bad looking building that used to be a florist on the corner of Orange Grove and Auburn Blvd. It used to house a flower shop called Flower Station. It was abandoned in 2002 but remained listed in directories as Love N Touch until 2008. It has hand painted signs now faded that says - Roses, Valentines Flowers. I wonder if that is the building that Dina saw driving by and became passionate to write a review about A Vanity Fair Florist.

Sacramento Florist Helps you Celebrate your Secretary

Secretary is not the politically correct term anymore, but Administrative Assistant
or Administrative Professional is such a long term and the job entails basically the same skills and duties, that's why I used the short term for the title of this piece.

For every successful manager, success depends on the skillful and adept Administrative Assistant or Administrative Support Team.

Success starts with your Administrative Assistant. Share your success with your Assistant - Send Flowers, or plants!

Administrative Professional Week is celebrated the last week of April. This year it falls on the week of April 20th to the 26th. This holiday celebrates secretaries, administrative assistants, executive secretaries, receptionists, and all other administrative support staff. This holiday was started in 1952 to recognize those in the administrative support field, (in the old days were called secretarial staff) and encourage others to follow in that career path.

Show your support team how much they mean to you. Send them flowers to let them know you appreciate them. Flowers and balloons, and small plants are a great way to show your appreciation for that special person who supports you or your office. Your administrative professional would love to receive a beautiful floral arrangement to show your appreciation and give their busy desk a beautiful display.

Let them know how much you appreciate your support staff by sending them your gift of appreciation early in the week. If you decide to send flowers or plants, place your order on Monday for delivery on Monday or Tuesday. What ever you decide, use the services of local Sacramento businesses. If you need a florist, please give us a call and we'll take good care of your order and we will deliver promptly.

Local Sacramento Florist prepares for Easter

One of the holidays that florists await for, plan and prepare for is Easter. When times were better, relatives who live out of town send flowers, gift baskets or the traditional Easter lily plant to their loved ones in Sacramento. Nowadays, most florists just plan for a nice full week. For those of us who have corporate customers like churches, we have Easter lilies to prepare and church arrangements to work on for delivery for the Easter service and for retirement homes for their dining rooms.
In other countries like the Philippines, they celebrate Easter which starts with Palm Sunday and the rest of the week is called Holy Week. Students would be given the whole week off to go back home and celebrate the holiday with their family.
So, before we all get busy with our Easter work, I send you my wish for a peaceful week - Happy Easter to you all.

Send a Smile, Send Flowers

We received 2 orders for tulips today, one was for an arrangement of hot pink tulip, another was for lavender tulips. However, we only had pink tulips available, so that's what we delivered. One recipient (in Citrus Heights, CA) said, it couldn't be for valentine's, because it's long been over, and it's not her birthday either. But she was happy to get one anyway, it was a nice surprise.  The other delivery was made for a ladyin Carmichael, CA who just lost a loved one. She was very happy to get the flowers and even gave the driver a tip. The flowers not only gave a smile to her face, it also gave the driver a real big smile for the tip. Now, if only more people order direct from a local Sacramento florist, not only will they have a smile for the affordability, but also give them more satisfaction when they hear the "thank you" from the recipient. See our Spring Tulips

Valentines Day - Express your Feelings with Flowers

Often times finding the right words to express feelings and emotions is difficult. This Valentines Day, how can you best say what is in your heart and on your mind? Flowers can help. Considered the universal language by many, flowers transcend emotional, racial, and national barriers to express a wide variety of feelings.

The following is a list of contemporary meaning commonly associated with the color of roses:

• Red - true love, passion, I love you

• Yellow - happiness, friendship, freedom

• Pink - sweetness, gentleness, grace, joy

• Bright pink - thankfulness

• Peach - sincerity

• Orange - fascination, enthusiasm

• White - purity and innocence
• Lavender - enchantment, love at first sight

Valentine's Day is a very busy time for flower shops, so be sure to give your local florist plenty of advance notice, most especially if you want to send a specific color or variety of rose. It's also a good idea to have a second choice in mind. And remember that your local florist can arrange for roses to be delivered out of town, too. Consider having the flowers delivered a day or two early. It will make easier for your florist to give you the best selection and service, and it will let your Valentine know that you just couldn't wait to get your message across.

Flower Delivery in Sacramento, Buy Local

In this time of economic turmoil, it is hard to tolerate retail companies who take a customer’s money without fully disclosing who they are or where their money goes. In particular I’m referring to companies who pose as local florists, but in fact, are just order-gatherers. They appear in the phone book as “Flowers in Sacramento” or “Sacramento Florist” or something similar. Most of the time they are only a local phone number attached to an out-of-state order desk. They take the order, charge big service or delivery fees, then assure the customer that they will process and deliver the order as specified. Little does the customer know what happens next.

The order-gatherer will attempt to find a real florist in the delivery area who will do the work for a discounted price. The discount is hefty. Many times the local florist who fills the order will only get 73% of the order value to actually fill the order. So, for example, if you order a $50 arrangement, you will pay $50 plus a $15.00 delivery or service fee plus tax, or about $70 for the order. The filling florist will get about $48.00 to fill and deliver your order. (You have to ask yourself, how motivated would I be to work for 73% of my wage?) The order-gatherer gets about $22.00 just for answering the phone and taking the order.


There’s an easy way to save money when ordering flowers out-of-town. An Internet search on “flowers Sacramento, CA”, for example, will yield an abundant list of florists, but be careful. Select a florist who has a street address in the ZIP code of the recipient. This will guarantee you have selected a real florist who has a real shop, and who will make and deliver your arrangement, usually at a lower cost than an order-gatherer. If you can’t find a street address associated with the phone number, chances are there isn’t one. This is the first tip-off that the business is just an order-gatherer, not a real florist.

So there you have it. You win with a real florist every time. No “buds” about it!

Local Florist in Sacramento

The presidential election is over, and it looks like the $650 million plus dollars in campaign contributions worked and the source of the contributions would not be looked into. However, people's attention is now directed to the poor economy.
There are several floral shops that have now closed because of the economic situation we're in. Those of us that are open are just trying to hang in there and hope to survive until the economy improves.
In the meantime, we try to be creative and innovative with our floral designs, our plants, and gift offerings to differentiate ourselves from grocery stores, big box or hardware stores. We are a local florist where brides can get affordable bridal bouquets at a very affordable price, a local florist that out of town customers can call for last minute orders for delivery in the metro Sacramento, Ca area, Roseville and Elk Grove.

Sacramento, CA is in a sad state

As a small business owner, it is hard not to worry in this shaky economy. I especially fear that a lot of small businesses will have difficulty surviving if Obama gets elected. He speaks so eloquently, but that's because he has teleprompter in fron of him, but when he doesn't, he stumbles with his words. It looks like he is so pessimistic about the situation, but doesn't really have a solution to speak of. He can't even decide if the government's action on AIG was the right thing or wrong move to take, and he thinks AIG is American Insurance Group. It is scary, and then his VP says that it is "patriotic" to pay more taxes. That is scary!
Here in Sacramento, CA, there are people demonstrating and demanding that they be allowed to use financial aid and pay in-state fees to go to college. These people are illegal immigrants! My first born couldn't and wasn't eligible for in-state fees and financial aid so she stayed in WA state when we moved to Sacramento, CA. We are Americans, and we didn't demand that our children be afforded in-state college fee even if we worked hard and paid taxes to the government. How could illegal immigrants have the nerve to demonstrate and demand benefits they do not deserve?

I hope that there are more people that realize that the Democratic candidates will cause them more harm, than good. That they realize, that McCain and Palin are sincere and speak from their heart and gut and really will try hard to improve the US government.

Small Sacramento Florist in a Shaky Economy

The headlines scream with gloom and doom, the Democrats blaming the Bush government for the financial crisis and the media wondering and sort of implying that there will be more large banks that will be affected after the rescue of AIG, and showing how the world is very much affected.

So, in our small corner of the world, how are we being affected?

The last few days, there have been fewer people buying flowers from our flower shop. The phone calls were mostly solicitation calls, people trying to sell their services from credit card processing, to website promotion, search marketing optimization, and a lot of hang-up calls.

The election is very much distressing to small business people like us. Being in a blue state with a large number of electoral votes, and a lot of outspoken liberal actors, I fear and I'm angry that people are not only convinced about the Democrats, but are also so very negative and derogatory towards the Republican candidate and his VP choice.

I just read about an article on the root of this financial crisis. Bernake's report implies that the congress in the Clinton era had a very big hand in the root of this crisis. That's why Obama is very much against investigating the cause of this crisis, while McCain is demanding a commission. And whoever is elected will not have much to do to solve it. The congress, majority of which is democrats, has a much more active role in working on the financial regulations. It's a scary thought to have the democrats get elected, it's not good for small business owners like us. There might not be too many Mom & Pops survive the many regulations, taxations, and other expenses specially since they plan to fund more social issues, better and more benefits to illegal immigrants who get better financial aid for their illegal immigrant children while my children have to struggle to support themselves in college because they are not qualified and they are American born to American parents and they speak English but can't speak Spanish. While we have to purchase our own health insurance, the Democrats finance benefits for illegals to get free medical care.

I hope and pray that the red states come through for the Republicans. McCain is a real American, he's more for fiscal responsibility, spending only the money that you have, and he's been fighting pork barrel earmarks for a long time. He has shown how hard working he is for the American people, he also has been able to get the other side work with him. It's too scary to be lead by a person that is there because of the support of millions of dollars from Fannie Mae and Freddie mac, and the influential movie moguls who are so liberal and too too to the left.

Gifts for Guys, Delivered by Sacramento Florist

For affordable gifts for guys, select balloons and chocolates or candy bouquet. If you are planning on sending a gift to his workplace or office the perfect gift to give is a green plant. Here is one that is perfect for an office desk, long lasting tropical plants in a very cute weber grill. Very compact, very affordable and long lasting gift he'll love.


Another take on this weber grille gift is a candy bouquet as follows:
Any of these two gifts are unique, and exclusively offered only by A Vanity Fair Florist, a family owned local florist here in Sacramento, CA.

A Little Flower Shop in Sacramento, CA

Most small business owners in the Sacramento area are looking for ways to drum up business. As a small business owner, I get so much phone calls from telemarketers promising to send business my way. One caller claimed their directory gets thousands of potential customers, claiming that they get a lot of web surfers searching for Sacramento florists. One company asked me to type certain keywords to show that their directory is on the top listing. Trouble is they are asking so much money, money that will eat up into the small budget that we small business owners work with.
Another caller used the same line, a promise to send more customers to our website. They can optimize our site and we'll find our site on the top listing on the search engines within a week. It's annoying sometimes to get so many calls each day of the week, taking our precious time on our main business - which is retailing of flowers and gifts and looking for simple and affordable ways to attract more business.

Sacramento CA and the Economy

With the housing market in a tight spot here in the Sacramento area and the price of gas is now over 3 bucks, I wonder how the floral industry will fare in this state of our economy. A few flower shops closed and a couple are up for sale.
The December sales are slightly down from last year, I wonder how our valentine sale will be. I have lowered my expectations and I'm not buying roses as much as last year, and yet, I'm hoping for the best. Not only do I have to prepare for that one day, I also need to prepare for a wedding for the Sunday after valentine. Thank goodness, weddings and funeral work are still a large part of the business of a florist. Weddings and funeral work haven't yet been invaded by walmart or the drug stores or grocery stores.