Anniversary flowers in Charleston

The hotel list is the part worth getting right, because Charleston's best-known properties are historic buildings with small back-of-house operations rather than convention hotels. The Charleston Place on Meeting Street and Hotel Bennett on King facing Marion Square have proper concierge desks and will hold and place an arrangement. The Dewberry on Meeting, The Mills House, Emeline and the French Quarter Inn on Church Street, Planters Inn beside the Market, Market Pavilion on East Bay, The Spectator on State Street, The Restoration and Grand Bohemian on Wentworth, Zero George, 86 Cannon, HarbourView Inn on Vendue Range and The Vendue all take front-desk delivery, with the usual caveat that a piece delivered at eleven waits in a back office until housekeeping clears the room. Wentworth Mansion on Wentworth Street, the John Rutledge House Inn on Broad and Two Meeting Street Inn at the Battery are small enough that an unannounced delivery is genuinely disruptive — call it in, or say in the notes that the studio should phone ahead. Across the bridges, Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina at Patriots Point, The Sanctuary at Kiawah Island and Wild Dunes on Isle of Palms are resort properties at the outer edge of the radius, where an early order is not optional.

The restaurant question comes up on nearly every anniversary order, and the honest answer saves people a bad evening: a Charleston restaurant is usually the wrong delivery address. FIG on Meeting, Husk on Queen, Peninsula Grill by the Market, Charleston Grill, Circa 1886 in the Wentworth Mansion carriage house, Magnolias and Slightly North of Broad on East Bay, Hall's Chophouse and The Ordinary on King, 82 Queen, Chez Nous, Delaney Oyster House — these are small rooms running two seatings on a Saturday, and a large arrangement arriving mid-service has nowhere to live and no one free to carry it. What works instead is a sequence: flowers to the house or the hotel room in the morning, dinner in the evening, and the arrangement waiting when the couple gets home. If the surprise genuinely has to happen at the table, talk to the restaurant yourself first and ask what they allow — some will take a small hand-tied held at the host stand, and the studio will build to that size if you tell them the constraint.