When faced with the prospect of shelling out hundreds of dollars to buy pre-arranged flowers for her wedding in 1999, Rebecca Williams decided to save money by arranging her flowers herself.
“I thought, ‘how hard could it be?’” Williams said Friday.
The answer: harder than anticipated, but still a joy for Williams to do with a beautiful outcome.
“We made it look fabulous, like, it was over-the-top beautiful,” Williams said of the flowers at her wedding.
Over 20 years later, flowers are still a central joy of Williams’ life, so much so that she opened her own storefront, Fern Ridge Floral & Design, in late 2022.
Williams’ personal motto for the store, “Never underestimate Plan B,” summarizes Williams’ journey towards operating a flower shop full-time.
Soon after Williams arranged her own wedding flowers in 1999, friends who had attended Williams’ wedding were looking to source flowers for their own weddings and turned to Williams for their flower arrangements.
“I was like, ‘Sure, I’m going to practice and not charge you guys anything, so it’s a win-win,’” she said.
After about two years, Williams decided to start charging for her flower arrangements, and her first business, Perpetual Posey, took off.
To better align her schedule with her children’s, however, Williams demoted her flower business to a side-gig and accepted a full-time job as the librarian for Rochester School District, a position she held for almost 15 years.
But now that her children are mostly grown, Williams has moved flowers back into the forefront of her life and opened Fern Ridge Floral & Design at 605 W. Main St. in Centralia.
Williams chose the Main Street location for her storefront after she and her daughter noticed the building, located right next to popular bakery Sweet Dough Cookie Co., was for sale.
Williams worked alongside Sweet Dough owner Ashlee Shirer for weddings in the past and Willaims’ daughter thought opening a flower shop right next door to Shirer’s business would be a fun prospect.
“She said, ‘How fun would it be to have flowers and cookies right next to each other?’ And I was like, ‘That’s actually a really good idea,’” Williams said.
The space itself, which previously housed a pizza shop and a tattoo parlor and had a bullet hole in the window, ultimately needed a complete interior renovation to accommodate a flower shop.
The summer of 2022 was spent painting, resurfacing, building shelves, installing new light fixtures and fixing a hole in the roof ahead of a planned July or August opening.
The bullet hole in the window, ultimately, was not repaired.
“We feel like it gives it a little bit of edge,” Williams joked.
The planned summer of 2022 opening was ultimately delayed until October after Williams was hospitalized with COVID-19, but the fall opening ended up working out better for the business overall, Williams said.
“Getting ready to open was kind of a big deal,” she said. “It worked out for the kids that are still in school that work here, it works out for my employees, so it’s been great.”
Business so far has been successful and is continuing to increase as the weather warms, Williams said.
“Once the sunshine comes out, I think people start thinking ‘Oh, sunshine and happy, and what can I do to make somebody else happy?’ So it just spreads that joy,” Williams said.
Instead of having a menu of prepared floral arrangements for customers to choose from, every one of Fern Ridge Floral’s arrangements are “designer’s choice,” meaning a customer comes in and gives a description of the kind of arrangement they want and a price point, which the designers use as a base to create a unique arrangement.
“What I think that does is that allows me and my designers here to really create the best of what we have to fit whatever price point our customer wants,” Williams said.
If a full arrangement isn’t in the customer’s budget or if someone is just looking to spontaneously pick up some flowers for a loved one, Fern Ridge Floral & Design has a “bloom bar” where customers can pick out flowers by the stem and either take the flowers home to arrange themselves or have designers arrange and wrap the flowers into a bouquet for them.
“It gives people an affordable option to give flowers,” Harrison said, later adding, “I really feel like flowers cheer everybody up … and I feel like it’s something that everybody should be able to at least afford, even if that means they’re buying a single stem of a rose or a single stem of a daisy. You know, that’s fun … I don’t think it needs to be over the top and grand all the time.”
The bloom bar adds to the friendly, casual feel Williams wants for her shop and encourages people to be interactive.
“I want people to feel like they’re part of the shop. I don’t want this to feel like you come in and make a formal order. Everything here is very laid back, very casual,” she said.
Since flowers often accompany a gift, Fern Ridge Floral & Design also sells a variety of locally-made and high-quality artisan products such as soaps, candles, jewelry, baby blankets, paint-by-numbers kits and stuffed animals.
“I really love the idea of having a really high quality product and not having to fill the shop with 100 different things,” Harrison said.
Fern Ridge Floral will soon launch its website at www.fernridgefloral.com.
In the meantime, visit https://www.facebook.com/people/Fern-Ridge-Floral-Design/ for more information.
