WAFA World Flower Show – What an experience!

~ Joni Duncan

I decided to enter the WAFA World Flower Show back in April of 2010 when a flyer was received in my newsletter from the Creative Floral Arrangers of the Americas. I have been planning to develop arranging programs to offer and thought this would be good experience for me.

The World Flower Show was titled “This Glorious Earth” and was going to offer 30 different classes of 20 exhibitors each for a total of 600 exhibits. There were 30 different countries that are part of WAFA who would be taking part. I have to say, the sheer numbers was quite daunting to begin with.

I sent in my registration listing my top class choice with two alternatives. At the last minute - literally, I decided to change my choices and chose “Glass” as my top choice. We were then notified in November of our acceptance to enter and the class assigned. When I was told my assignment was “Glass” I had to go back to my registration because I thought I had chosen “Minerals”, I was then reminded of my last minute switch!! I then designed and commissioned some glass pieces to be made by a local glass blower/artist, Jim Kahle.

Arriving home from work on Friday, May 27, I had received an email from the artistic coordinator with some last minute reminders, one of them was the time we were assigned to pick up our pre-ordered flowers – PRE-ORDERED FLOWERS!! – Oh no!, I had completely forgot to pre-order my flowers and it was now past the deadline. I was beside myself, having planned this for 1 ½ year and then to forget to pre-order the flowers – what was I thinking? So now I had to order my flowers from Hawaii and travel with them for the three days to get to Boston. I went out and purchased about six screens to surround the car windows with to try to keep them out of the sun! Oh what we designers will go through!!

Having started the mission so early it seemed like it took forever for the date to arrive. We left Beavercreek about noon on Saturday, 6/10, with a planned stop in Jamestown, NY on Saturday night and Sturbridge, MA on Sunday night, heading into Boston about noon on Monday to get to the houseboat. Sunday night I took a look at my Anthuriums and they had all turned very dark red - what the heck? I couldn’t use these, so now the plan was to get up and leave Sturbridge at 4am, yes 4am to get into Boston at 5am to go to the Boston Flower Exchange which was opened up to the exhibitors from 5am till noon. Knowing what a competitive bunch of people floral designers are, I knew I had to get there early in order to get the type of tropical flowers I needed. My husband Butch was my navigator, needless to say, next time we go on a trip I will purchase a GPS prior!! I love you honey!

We arrived in Boston on time, not too much traffic at 5am and were quite proud of ourselves for finding the street right away. We couldn’t find the address after much looking and then discovered we were in the wrong town; see there is Boston, South Boston, Chelsea, Everett, etc, etc….. After several phone calls to the poor wholesaler I had been dealing with, we finally made it to the flower exchange about 7:30am. I wanted to live there! Row after row of nothing but flowers, it was absolutely overwhelming, but, finding Anthuriums was a different story. Purchased one box of a color I didn’t want but was afraid I would have to use it and then at one of the last distributors visited found the color I wanted. Bought all they had and now had a box of 12 that I no longer needed.

We had decided to rent a houseboat in Boston for the week versus staying at a hotel. With the flowers taken care of it was time to find our houseboat and relax some. We found the marina and were then told our free parking spot on the pier by the houseboat had changed and we had to park in a garage about three blocks away! Don’t they know how much “stuff” a flower designer takes with them?

Finally, on Tuesday, we were allowed to take our “stuff” and flowers and drop them off at the Seaport Trade Center, as we were to design our exhibits on Wednesday, from 6am till noon. While loading our car I saw several women with floral designing equipment and asked them if they were entering the show. There were five of them from the United Kingdom and yes, they were entering the show also. We chatted a bit about classes entered; they were staying on a houseboat also. I hadn’t seen anything listed in the paperwork as far as a time to drop stuff off except for “afternoon” so upon arriving at the Seaport we found out we couldn’t enter until 4pm. That left an hour to wait; apparently a lot of others didn’t know either as the lobby area got quite full. The different languages being spoken all around me was unbelievable! This was also an opportunity to meet some of the other exhibitors, such as a wonderful lady from India who said she had been talked into entering the class “Writing”, (she just happened to win first place!), also met a nice lady from Williamsburg, VA entering “Magic” and my now friends from the United Kingdom. Everyone was so nice and friendly; we were all introducing ourselves to each other and finding out what class each was entering. We couldn’t start our design at all; nothing was allowed to be on the table at all, so it was pretty much in and out.

Wednesday, the day of the show had finally arrived! I wanted to be at the Seaport at 6am so about 5:30am, Butch, being the kind husband he is, went to the garage to get the car for me – only the garage didn’t open until 6am! (Ever get the feeling the world is against you?) After speaking with security they did finally let him get the car and I was able to get to the Seaport Trade Center about 6:30am. I sat down to get to work and discovered my black bag with ALL my mechanics was missing! After calling Butch to verify that we had brought it in, I then went to the “floor supervisor” for my class and told her I had a bag of mechanics missing. We went to the arbiters table and it was determined I would have to wait for one of the vendors to open to see if I could replace my mechanics. Panic was starting to settle in. Luckily the floor supervisor kept her head and suggested we walk around to see if we could find it, no luck. After she found out I had drove, she suggested I double check just to be sure it wasn’t in the car, so I trucked across the street to the garage and looked. Trunk empty, front seat empty, back seat empty, back seat floor emp…oh wait what was that, my bag! Yes, my black bag of mechanics was still sitting on the black carpet in the back seat floor of the car. Needless to say I was thrilled and then thought, oh my, I am so embarrassed after involving everyone at the show. I have to confess it did run through my mind to not acknowledge that I had found it but common sense persevered as I really needed what was in the bag, so I ate humble pie, apologized profusely and told them I had found my bag. They were all very gracious and were just relieved I had found my bag.

Finally start putting my design together, I had so many people stop by and say how much they loved my design that when I left I felt confident that I would do well in the competition. I couldn’t find out until Thursday morning when we met with the judges how I did. We arrived and I quickly walked back to my exhibit, rounded the corner and……nothing, no ribbon. I was very disappointed to say the least; however, once the public arrived I heard nothing but wonderful comments about my design. The public loved it! Many of the show judges (just not my class judges unfortunately!) came over and gave me so many compliments on my design and the fact that my wonderful friends from OAGC were able to come and see it, made the fact that I hadn’t won a ribbon not matter at all. In the end; it truly was an honor to just be part of the show and meet so many wonderful designers from all over the world. I really would have hated to be a judge at the show because each and every exhibit was fantastic. Finally, Sunday came, tore the show down and left with many new friends and many new ideas.

Now, who wants to go to Dublin, Ireland with me in three years?