What began as a “side hustle” for educator Rebecca Williams’ own wedding in 1999 has now blossomed into a successful floral bouquet design business.
The Centralia resident just celebrated the second year of Fern Ridge Floral & Design operating out of a brick-and-mortar location, and the business accolades are beginning to stack up.
On top of winning 2023 and 2024 KMNT Country Listeners’ Choice awards, Fern Ridge Floral & Design just won The Chronicle’s 2024 Best of Lewis County Best Florist award last month.
“I was literally shocked. I was not expecting it at all. I was hopeful, because when you’re a business you want to make a name and reputation for yourself, and our No. 1 focus is pushing out quality products and making sure our customers are exceedingly happy,” Williams said. “So when I won that, I was like, ‘Ah! It’s working!’”
Accolades aside, Williams has been running Fern Ridge Floral for as long as she has been married, as her own wedding was her first foray into floral design.
“I just had my 25th wedding anniversary. We got married in 1999 and that’s actually what started my whole floral journey,” Williams said. “I knew I wanted the flowers at my wedding to be kind of a standout thing, but I had no idea how much they cost. So when I went to get an estimate, I had a little bit of what I would call sticker shock.”
Given the popularity of television personality and designer Martha Stewart at the time — who promoted many do-it-yourself design projects — she decided to try her own hand at floral design to save some money.
While she was successful, she also learned why wedding flowers typically cost more.
“I think it’s a little bit of a misconception. They say that as soon as florists see a bride coming they double the price, but that’s not true. Weddings just take so much more planning and organizing. You have to have extra staff and vehicles, all that stuff goes into it. That’s why it costs more,” Williams said.
She also discovered she loved doing it, but only in her spare time at first as she worked full time as the librarian at Grand Mound Elementary School before working as the registrar at Rochester Middle School.
It wasn’t until October 2022 that she finally decided to open a brick-and-mortar location for Fern Ridge Floral and work full time at bouquet design. The business was first located next to the original location of the Sweet Dough Cookie Co. on Main Street in Centralia.
When Sweet Dough Cookie Co. moved to Chehalis for a larger location earlier this year, Williams also decided to move.
“We were kind of down there by ourselves, and there weren’t really a lot of other walkable businesses down there, so we decided to see what was closer to Tower (Avenue),” Williams said. “This ended up coming open the same exact time that Ashlee was moving.”
Still located on Main Street just west of Tower Avenue in downtown Centralia, Fern Ridge Floral focuses on working with clients to design custom bouquets and flower arrangements for everything from weddings and other events to providing a custom flower bouquet subscription service — where clients can have fresh flowers delivered on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis.
Williams’ goal is to provide her clients with unique bouquet designs while also sourcing as many flowers as she can locally.
“If I can buy from a local grower, I absolutely will buy from a local grower, hands down,” Williams said.
While she wishes she could source 100% of her flowers locally, not all the flowers she gets requests for grow in this region or climate, so in some cases she has no choice but to purchase them through a wholesaler importing flowers.
Any local flower farmers in the area who haven’t sold to Williams before are invited to contact her to discuss business.
With the average wedding ceremony and reception now costing around $35,000, according to a recent survey of newly married couples by theknot.com, Williams likes to try to keep things as affordable as possible for her clients.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m cheap by any stretch of the imagination, but I still try to keep in mind 22-year-old Rebecca when I’m going over pricing with brides, because I know that is a big factor for a lot of people,” Williams said. “... I’m really a minimalist when it comes to things. I’m not the type of florist that’s going to push you to get a ton of stuff, because most of my business for brides comes from referrals. I don’t want people to remember me as that lady that pushed them to buy a whole bunch of stuff that they didn’t really think they needed.”
She used to be shy about talking about budgets with her clients, but now it’s usually one of the starting points of the conversation as it helps Williams still be able to choose unique flowers to craft bouquets while keeping things affordable.
It’s not just flowers that she sells, either, as Williams also sells items including custom made clothing, soaps, lotions and more at Fern Ridge Floral.
“The majority of the products that I carry in my shop are either locally made or made by a small business. Women-owned, minority-owned, those businesses I’m really drawn to because I know how hard it is to get started and build yourself from the ground up,” Williams said.
Located at 107 W. Main St. in downtown Centralia, Fern Ridge Floral & Design is open Monday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 10:10 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., though the business might be closed on Saturdays over the winter months, Williams added.
To contact Fern Ridge Floral about floral arrangement estimates or selling flowers wholesale, call the business at 360-669-5979 or message it on its Facebook page at https://tinyurl.com/yfeaxm3b.
For more information, visit Fern Ridge Floral’s website at https://fernridgefloral.com/.
