Funeral flowers in Bali: colour, and what stays out of the build
Format sorts itself out once you know where the piece will stand and how far away people will be from it. Colour is the question senders worry about, and decoration is the one they never think to ask. Between them they account for most of what goes wrong in these orders.
Orders start at 650,000 IDR, with payment by QRIS, GoPay, OVO, DANA or cash to the courier.
Colour, briefly
White carries almost any case and asks no questions of the sender. Deep red belongs to a spouse, a child or a very close friend, and from a workplace it reads as an overstep. Purple and burgundy carry age and respect, and both need something pale worked through them or the mass turns heavy in the room. For a child the work stays white with a little pale blue or pale pink, built in small heads rather than large ones.
"When someone tells us they barely knew the family, that is useful information. It means white, and it means we stop asking questions they would rather not answer."
— JFLOO florist
The island supplies that end of the range without difficulty. Lisianthus gives an even white field, macrophylla hydrangea provides the mass, and orchids hold longer than anything else standing in the same piece. Imported roses at 60 to 90 cm come in where a rounder head is wanted, though they soften at the neck before the rest of the work does. Tropical foliage keeps the outline from collapsing inward by the end of the day.
What stays out
Glitter, lacquered film, gold spray and novelty picks all come from gift work, where they belong, and they turn up in these orders more often than anyone would guess. They get added out of habit rather than intent. In a room where everything else is quiet, they are the first thing a person's eye lands on, ahead of the flowers themselves. Ribbon stays plain, in a single colour, matte or smooth satin, with lettering in one tone and sized to be read from the same distance as the piece.
Three checks cover it:
- no glitter, lacquer or gold spray anywhere on the work
- plain ribbon in one colour, lettering in a single tone
- nothing heavily scented, and no stamens left in place.
Scent deserves its own thought. Several strongly scented arrangements in one closed room become overpowering inside an hour, and the people it affects are rarely the ones who chose them. Pollen is the same story from a different angle, since it marks clothing and upholstery and does not come out, which is why stamens are taken off before assembly rather than after.
The road, and the hour
Seminyak, Canggu and Sanur take 90 to 150 minutes from a confirmed order, while Uluwatu, Tabanan and the remote villas take three to four hours. Berawa, Kuta, Legian, Jimbaran, Nusa Dua and Ubud are routine runs for us. We deliver 9 AM to 10 PM, and for this occasion we fix an hour rather than a window, because a late arrival cannot be rescheduled into anything useful. Above 30 °C with island humidity behind it the work is wrapped firmly, packed with a cooling element and carried closed for the whole of a long run.
Funeral flowers in Bali are ordered on short notice almost every time.
Give us the age and sex of the person who has died, who the flowers come from, the venue and the hour they need to be standing. If you cannot check the venue yourself, the funeral director's number is more use to us than an address on its own.
