Occasions in Miami

Occasions in Miami: the month before Mother's Day and the rest of the year

The busiest month for flowers at Miami International Airport is not the run-up to Valentine's Day. It is the month before Mother's Day, when the airport takes in more than 45,000 tons of cut flowers, over 1,500 tons a day. Occasions in Miami follow the same calendar, and choosing the right flowers starts with the date and the person receiving them.

Mother's Day before Valentine's: Miami's two biggest flower months

By the second week of February, Miami's flower trade already shows where the volume goes: half to three-fifths of everything shipped in for Valentine's Day is red roses, ordered for a single date. Mother's Day draws a longer, heavier season around it, because the airport counts the whole month leading up to the second Sunday in May, not one evening.

Miami's Latin American communities add their own dates to the same stretch. Mexican, Salvadoran and Guatemalan families in the city mark Día de las Madres on 10 May. Nicaraguan families mark it on 30 May, so flower shops answer to more than one Mother's Day card on the calendar.

For the day itself, roses, lilies and hydrangea cover most tastes, and a basket that needs no vase suits a home where table space is already taken by brunch. Mother's Day flowers is the place to start, and Valentine's Day bouquets follow the same red-rose logic a few months earlier.

Delivery slots around both dates run wider than usual, and nobody promises a courier to the minute; ordering a few days ahead keeps more time slots open, while a last-minute order narrows the choice. Every bouquet is put together after the order is placed, and the sender gets a photo before the courier leaves. A card is included at no extra cost, most orders reach the recipient the same day they are placed, and the exact window for each bouquet shows on its own page. Delivery within the centre is free; other zones and their rates are on the delivery page.

From a weekday ceremony to a new home: congratulation flowers

Miami-Dade's public high schools hold their ceremonies on weekday mornings and afternoons in late May and early June. The last published schedule had all 66 schools graduating on a weekday, none on a weekend. A hand-tied bunch of yellow roses or white lisianthus is easier to carry with a gown and through a crowd; graduation bouquets cover the rest of the format.

A new home asks for something that stands on its own while boxes are still being unpacked. A basket or a box needs no vase and no shelf cleared for it, which matters on moving day. Housewarming gathers the formats that work best for a first week in an unfamiliar kitchen.

A birth, or a trip home from the maternity ward, usually means flowers sent to a hospital. A manager checks with the ward beforehand whether flowers are allowed there at all; where they are not, the bouquet waits at the nursing station or goes out on the day of discharge instead. The hospital and ward deliveries page covers both cases.

A cake, balloons or a box of sweets can go into the same basket as the flowers, so the congratulations arrive as one delivery rather than two.

Anniversaries that fall in Miami's wedding months, December to April

Occasions in Miami that mark a wedding anniversary tend to cluster in the months when the city holds its weddings. Most ceremonies here take place between December and March or April, with May and October quieter in between. A couple married in Miami is therefore more likely to count their anniversary from a winter or spring date than a summer one.

Anniversary flowers in Miami also follow a set of names attached to the years. Paper marks the first year, wood the fifth and tin the tenth, a convention added in English-speaking countries in the nineteenth century. Silver for the twenty-fifth and gold for the fiftieth are older still. Each one can be echoed in the wrapping rather than in the flowers themselves.

A fiftieth anniversary carries that convention furthest: gold ribbon, gold-toned paper or a container in a warm metallic finish marks it out from an ordinary bunch of roses. Wedding anniversary flowers covers the formats built around it.

The card matters more than the wrapping on a long marriage: a note written in the sender's own words says more than a printed line, and there is room for it with every order.

Sympathy flowers: the family home, the service and a shiva

Flowers sent to a family's home after a death work best small or medium, something that fits on a side table without rearranging the room. A funeral spray or a standing arrangement, taller and built for a stand rather than a table, belongs at the service itself, not the house.

Jewish funerals and the shiva that follows are the exception worth knowing before you order. Flowers are not part of either custom among Miami's Jewish families, a custom shared across South Florida, and a card, a meal brought to the house or a donation takes their place instead. Where an obituary asks for donations in lieu of flowers, that instruction is followed rather than worked around.

A sympathy card can be left unsigned or signed with a first name only.

A first order among occasions in Miami often starts with the simplest case: a birthday, where birthday flowers covers roses, lilies and mixed bouquets by age and taste. A thank-you bouquet suits someone who did more than was asked, and from there the date on the calendar decides the rest.