When my husband joined the business full-time last year, it wasn’t because we had always dreamed of working side-by-side. It was because things were exploding, in a good way. Orders were flying in, and what started as my creative vision suddenly needed serious systems, timelines, and someone to help carry the growing load.
Enter: my husband, Ben. Affectionally, his nickname is Bengineer! A manufacturing engineer by trade, he jumped in and brought with him the skills necessary to take our business to the next level. He took over pressing, building systems, and running time studies. I kept the role of creative director and overall strategist, with my eyes focused on the bigger picture. The vision. The story behind every petal.
Living together and working together 24/7, however, has been its own…flower to press.
There’s no “off switch.” Our conversations at dinner often include topics like humidity levels, turnaround times, or whether we’re labeling our inventory bins correctly. It’s been a transition, learning how to make space for our marriage inside the business and space for the business inside our marriage.
What’s Hard
Our communication styles could not be more different. He loves details, procedures, instructions, rules, and subfolders within folders. I tend to live in the realm of intuition, gut instinct, and “this just feels right.” I like to move fast. He likes to be thorough. Which, to be fair, is probably why our finished pieces are so precise and well-built.
And yet, creatively? It’s kind of magic. It’s like this unspoken rhythm, we’re building a piece and where my hand stops, his just knows where the next flower goes. That part is always reassuring. It reminds me we are building more than just a business. We are building something together.
What Works
Our partnership works because of our complementary strengths. I know what I’m good at (dreaming, designing, storytelling), and I know what he’s good at (building, refining, organizing). We’ve found our rhythm by leaning into that, not competing with it.
I really noticed the shift, the moment the business leveled up, when he started treating it like a Monday-through-Friday job. Showing up every day, taking ownership of operations, and giving the business a spine to match its heart.
What I’ve Learned
Working with your partner is deeply gratifying and deeply humbling. You learn things about each other, you wouldn’t otherwise. You see how they solve problems. How they handle stress. You see what makes them light up. And yes, what makes them sigh heavily and go reorganize the tool cart after you’ve changed the label system…again.
Whether you’re a newlywed, a creative, or someone just curious about what goes on behind the scenes of flower preservation you can know this: every piece that leaves our studio has both a little bit of my eye and a little bit of his hands. We build them together.