Sympathy flowers in Upland

Timing is the whole job. A viewing usually wants flowers in place an hour or more before the family arrives, because the family walking into a room that is already arranged is the point. A chapel service wants delivery in the morning, well before the first car parks, and the funeral director — not the florist — decides where each piece stands. A graveside committal is the least forgiving window of the three: the cemetery has a scheduled slot, the grounds crew sets up and breaks down against it, and a piece that arrives after the party has left has to be carried back. If you know the chapel name, the service date and the hour, put all three in the order. If you only know the family's name and the city, the studio can usually call the mortuary and confirm — mortuaries in this valley are used to the call and will generally give a florist the delivery window even when they will not give it to a stranger.

It helps to know what the pieces are called, because the vocabulary maps onto who sends which. A standing spray is a one-sided arrangement on an easel, read from the front, and it is what colleagues, congregations and extended family most often send to a chapel. A casket spray rests on the casket itself and is traditionally the immediate family's piece, which is the reason to ask before ordering one. Wreaths and crosses are set-piece tributes that also stand on easels. A basket or vase arrangement is the flexible choice: it works at a chapel and then travels to the house or the post-service reception, which a large easel piece cannot. A hand-tied bouquet is a gift for a person rather than for a room, and it belongs at a home or a hospital. If you are not close to the family, a basket or vase arrangement with a legible card is almost always the right call.