Your significant other brings you a beautiful bouquet of flowers, or a majestically arranged vase with roses arrives in your office giving you bragging rights for the next few days. Someone was thinking of you. You admire them from time to time as you work or walk past them, but you don’t think of how those flowers came to be there in the first place and the incredible number of hours and work that goes into making hundreds of flower arrangements and planters. As the recipient you only see the finishing touch, blissfully oblivious of the literal blood, sweat, and tears that go into making this happen every year.

As a floral designer who is still recovering from working nine long days in a row, putting my life on hold, missing classes because I juggle full time enrollment with a full time job, I want to shed a little light on the mystery. I tell everyone that I pretty much drop off the face of the earth. I’m not complaining because I love what I do, but everything in excess becomes a struggle of taking that extra step in the marathon of holidays for floral designers everywhere.

Floral designers are only one spoke in the wheel. At Louis Barry Florist, the shop where I work, it begins with planning weeks in advance. The owners, Lou and Barry, best friends, begin by ordering flowers and setting up extra delivery drivers as well as bringing in any extra counter help they can find. There are three full time designers at Louis Barry and another designer who comes into help during the holiday. In actuality that is not nearly enough designers for the workload that we anticipate coming our way. The designers start assessing how we can be as productive and efficient as possible. There also must be the point when no more orders can be taken.

I personally begin dreading it because I know how tired I will be. Then there are the girls who take care of the customers who we would be lost without. They allow us to design without interruption or we would never get the orders out. Throughout the two weeks prior the orders begin to trickle in and about three days before they really begin to pour in.

Valentine’s Day starts for us the weekend before. We went in Saturday, caught up on our usual weekly corporate accounts while the girls “processed,” or cleaned and cut, all the flowers to put in water. They must drink before they can be used, or they won’t last. I even dragged my daughter Rose in to help us out! Sunday, we began making a ton of arrangements to put in the cooler for cash and then started making orders for the next day, so they would be ready to go to their destination at a reasonable time. The marathon has begun.

Wednesday, the night before Valentine’s Day, was the longest, most tiring day of all. We worked from 8 a.m. until midnight filling as many orders as we could, all the while being aware of the pickups that needed to be made as well. By midnight my feet ached, my hands were cracked and dry, and I still had to keep going. I still had to walk to South Station and make my way home to Lexington.

Valentine’s Day itself starts early, seven in the morning. I cannot say that we were bright eyed and bushy tailed, but we were there, laughing in our punchiness and battle comradery. We were all in it together. We all got right to work; the website had to be turned off at this point, because it is more than four designers could make. We are good, but we are not miracle workers! We were selective on the pick-up orders we take as well and kept it at a dozen roses at this point because they are quick and easy. The significant others, mostly men, come in waves, at times the line is way out the door of the shop into the lobby of the building in the Financial District we are located. The men seemed to be understanding and patient as the girls worked to make their bouquets or wrap their flowers.

Finally, around 8 p.m. we were able to clean up and go home, another Valentine’s Day under our belts. But what people don’t realize is that it doesn’t end for us then. There is the residual, “Oops, I forgot” purchases over the next couple of days, the usual weekly accounts that must be made, and making sense of a chaotic shop. I personally was busy through Saturday, and it wasn’t until President’s Day that we were able to catch up on accounts.

Valentine’s Day is a beautiful day for so many. I know the cost of flowers go up, but it goes up for everyone. The shops pay more from the wholesalers. Supply and demand. Many people feel that it is a commercialized holiday and I must agree. I am writing this weeks later and am still too exhausted to function. We don’t eat well, we drink lots of coffee and Coca Cola, and pop lots of Ibuprofen and Zicam to keep going. I love the creativity of my job, but I become a robot just dragging my creativity from deep within my recesses of my consciousness because our bodies by the actual day have become broken down, low-on-fumes vehicles.

I write this so that you can see the other side, the dark side, of Valentine’s Day and what goes into it. We work hard to make sure you have that beautiful bouquet that you can enjoy. Nothing pretty comes without a small expense to the creator so have some compassion on your florist on that day and know that it is a large machine operating behind a magnificent arrangement of flowers!