"The peacock proudly stands behind me, which design we rehashed and installed for a day's hardwork, to become the centerpiece at my friend's party."

One of the freelance part time jobs I do from time to time is helping in the design, preparation, installation and dismantling of floral designs. These days, I'd do this mostly for religious events for church activities thru my network of friends in the place where I'm located.

I've never done floral designs ever before back in the Philippines. It's one of those opportunities that presented itself to me to be able to get into hardline creative works. Boy, I tell you, it's one tough job, to the say least. It starts with doing cleaning tasks. This is to make sure the flowers, the branches and fillers are all cleaned up. They have to made sure all the necessary parts of the flowers are kept in place, and those unwanted parts are removed and thrown away. It's time consuming, actually. You will have to bring in buckets of water, you will also have to throw them away when not needed. It does not make it even easier to use artificial flowers, branches and leaves, as they also entail trimming works as well. As to the other procedures, the design portion is the most formidable. It's usually done with a lead designer, in consonant with the help of others involved, including people who will be holding the event, and those people who will be paying for the event, one way or another.

Now, to actually prepare the floral designs, you will have to spend more time putting in place the flowers, leaves, branches, and leaves according to what has been drawn up for a design earlier. As to making the actual arrangement (which can be only flowers, branches plus leaves, flowers plus leaves, or a mix of everything), an openness of your senses towards color, theme, light, and what's appealing to the senses will go a long way, if you want to get involved. There's no mistaking about this creative sense, as it's nothing magical..come on, even cats, among other animals, have noticed what's innately beautiful. Use this sense when you got the chance to work on a floral arrangement.

Depending on amount of time available, this may just happening all at the same time while designs are being done. You have to constantly listen to feedback from the lead designers. These designs are just simply amazing to behold when they go about forming into something grand and beautiful, from what used to look like trash earlier. It's something like making something more beautiful than nature (and what else can ever be more beautiful than nature?), by which a lot of creativity works happen, in a second. It's wonderful to behold how things, such as flowers, branches and leaves, that some may just take for granted, and won't even pay for a single cent, come into formation through the efforts of a team.

As my friends have told me, & what I've learned on the job, it's a man's job. Don't you ever dare think it'll make less of a man of you to do this kind of work. In case you get yourself in New York City's flower district, you'd notice most workers are men, which says a lot about the nature of work. You may also visit some other floral shops, and you'd notice, most workers are men. There are a lot of women workers as well; you'll see them doing some other stuff.

And by the way, you need to have floral designs in most events you'd be holding. These stuffs make the whole place more special and more memorable. If you care to have photos look more important and more worthy of your good memories, make sure you put floral designs in them. You don't need to do them yourself, as there are a lot of designers around. All you need is to ask around, and give your budget, and not be afraid to clarify what you want done, plus making sure you won't leave everything done without you getting involved. You'll learn a lot from the process, and get to discover your own inner yearnings to do something innately creative as creating floral designs!