INTERVIEW WITH Whitney St. Germain of WR Designs

This interview is sponsored by the Anchor Auto Group as part of their initiative to help promote other locally owned area businesses.

Whitney St. Germain

Today we’re featuring WR Designs in Coventry Rhode Island.  They specialize in wedding and event floral design but also offer other flower arrangements around holidays like Valentine’s Day, and Mother’s Day etc.  They also have a bouquet subscription.

We talked with Whitney St. Germain, who started in WR Designs in 2017.

How did WR Designs Start?

I had been doing flowers for friend’s weddings. It really just started off as a hobby. I did my own wedding flowers and loved it.  So I decided to start a business. In November I created Instagram and Facebook pages, thinking I’d start with social media. And the same day, I got an order. My very first week I booked a wedding. So I was very excited. It gave me a little bit of a boost of confidence and kind of let things go. And it just took off. I’ve been doing weddings ever since. I love it.  Last year was my biggest year yet, at 54 weddings!

And you’ve started on a collaboration with other related businesses, can you tell us more about that?

“As we know, during 2020 all small businesses kind of took a hit. And it was really tough even for me with the wedding industry. So I decided to really kind of push more out of the box with subscriptions, the holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. I was just chatting with a group of moms that have Rhode Island small businesses. I was just tossing around ideas. Can we put together a big, nice package deal like one stop shop, click and order everything together: flowers, sweets and cute wooden decor? And we got a photographer on board too. So she’s also offering a little photography session as a part of the package deal. So I’m really excited.

Tell us about this package you have through this collaboration that you’re offering for Valentine’s Day.

It’s a $250 value. It’s on sale for $150. You’ll get a flower arrangement. There is chocolate covered strawberries and Oreos, a vanilla cake jar, and a hand painted gift tag that’s made out of wood and charcuterie board. It’s really cute for Valentine’s Day, then plus you get $100 Gift Card towards the photography session.

So tell us more about how you would provide flowers for a wedding.

So typically, the process is, if it’s a Saturday wedding, I get the delivery here on a Wednesday, the flowers hydrate. Thursday, Friday, I assemble bouquets and centerpieces, and even larger pieces that I can transport to the wedding. So that way, most of the work is done ahead. I just do final tweaks on-site. For the most part, I’m at the wedding venue for about two hours. And I usually try to get out of there before any guests arrive.

Sounds like a really interesting business how did you get into it?

I have always just loved being craftsy making things with my hands and friends of mine asked “can you help me do my flowers for my wedding” so it really just came from people seeing what I can do. I did probably four or five of my friends wedding flowers for them. So it was all self-taught. I’ve done lots on my own researching and taking online classes and things like that.

And what is the best way for people to get in touch with you?

“All of my links are available on Instagram but my website is WRdesignsri.com. Again, all my links can be accessed through that too.

This interview was lightly edited and condensed for clarity.