By Luka Potts
That single friend who has been longing for a relationship beats the drunken crowd to catch the bride’s bouquet.
A nervous man adjusts his tie and anxiously plucks at a bunch of roses as he waits for his date to arrive at the restaurant.
A young woman dressed in academic regalia smiles ear to ear as she poses with a big bouquet and her freshly earned degree.
Bouquets mark some of the most important moments of our lives.
And behind every bouquet is a florist.
The Floristry Department at TAFE ultimo is bursting with life. Walk through the door and you’re met with the scent of flowers and foliage and bursts of colours from the bouquets lining the walls.
Bronwyn Chessari is studying her Certificate III in floristry at the TAFE Ultimo campus and “is just loving floristry”.
For Chessari, a passion for creativity has revealed a second life.
“I’ve spent a lot of years at home raising my kids, and then I got to a point where I felt like I’d like to learn something new myself. That’s just for me. Something that I’m interested in,” she said, as she put together a bouquet for a student’s graduation.
Picking the right colour palette and fixing the perfect arrangement is business as usual for Bronwyn.
“When I first came into it I was surprised by all of the different demographics. All of the different types of people that wanted to learn floristry,” said Chessari, fiddling with a troublesome stem of eucalyptus.
“So there’s the younger students who have come straight from school, there’s the older students, like myself, that have lived a lot and decided ‘I’d really like to learn that’. We all come together and we all add something different.”
Chessari reflected on some of the most surprising moments of her studies before offering some free advice for anyone considering studying at TAFE NSW.
“If you like flowers, If you like working with people, if you’d just like to learn something new. There’s so many different options, and honestly, the world’s your oyster,” she said.
For every florist putting a bouquet together, there’s someone on the other end who will remember it.
Emerging journalist Ana Gonzales Flores reflected on her most impactful bouquet.
“The most memorable flowers I’ve ever gotten were the first flowers my partner gave me,” Gonzales Flores said. “It was really big. Very pink, my favourite colour.”
She added with a knowing smirk: “It was the first time he’d ever given someone flowers, and it was to make our relationship official.”
Gonzales Flores said that a bouquet of flowers is so important because it stands for so much.
“It was symbolic. It represented the amount of love he had for me,” she said before adding with a cheeky grin, “I can’t wait for my next big bouquet of flowers.”
As the bouquet passes from Bronwyn’s studio to Ana’s hands, it is no longer just a bunch of flowers, but a memory that will last forever.
Featured image: Floristry student Bronwyn Chessari with her freshly assembled bouquet. Photo: Luka Potts
Listen to this story and much more by catching the Try TAFE Day show which is streaming on TAFE Radio from 10am to 3pm today, September 10.
