Jamie Sciscoe prepares for this year’s Valentine’s Day like she has for the past 22 years.
It started two months ago when Sciscoe ordered her flowers in preparation for the busy holiday. On a typical week at Mary M’s Walnut House Flowers and Gifts, the shop receives up to 3,000 roses, but this week leading up to and including Valentine’s Day, they expect to go through at least 15,000.
“We will all be here all weekend long preparing,” Sciscoe said. “We have to stay a day ahead in order to assess how many flowers we have and if we have the manpower to get it all done.”
It’s organized chaos in the shop on Wednesday morning as a team of four prepare for the influx of orders and flowers that are set to arrive on Friday. Three designers, including Sciscoe, clean, cut and place flower arrangements for funeral orders, before officially beginning Valentine’s Day preparation on Friday.
Sciscoe will increase her staff from 4 to 20 people on Valentine’s Day. She’ll start this weekend preparing the shop by filling the massive flower coolers and completing orders before Wednesday’s holiday. Once Valentine’s Day comes, five drivers and five “jumpers” will deliver up to 150 orders each all around the Bloomington area. The shop will have a full cooler filled with a variety of flowers and dozens of roses grouped together for walk-in customers for a quick pick-up. Sciscoe expects there to be a line of people winding through the front of the shop while she and her five other designers cut and make bouquets for delivery orders as they come in.
“We will just keep making up dozens of roses as much as possible so that we can use them for orders and be done and ready,” she said. “We do call it D-Day, It’s our own personal doomsday.”
She began working for her family floral shop when she was 15.