Sending Sympathy Flowers in Bakersfield: What to Send and Where It Goes

Somebody has died, and within about a day you are expected to make a decision you have never made before. Standing spray or casket spray. Send it to the funeral home or the house. Lilies or not lilies. Nobody teaches you this, and the internet is not much help because most of what comes up is written to sell you something rather than to answer the question.

So here is the plain version, from a shop that does these every week.

Start with one question: where is it going?

Everything else follows from this. Flowers for a service and flowers for a house are different objects, built differently, and sending the wrong one is the most common mistake we see.

If you are close enough to the family to ask, ask. If you are not, the obituary usually tells you. If it says "services will be held at" a funeral home or church, flowers go there. If it says "in lieu of flowers, please donate to", respect that - a card and a phone call carry more weight than an arrangement the family did not want.

What to send to the service

Service flowers are built to be seen from ten or fifteen feet away, standing up, in a room. They are large on purpose.

• Standing spray. A one-sided arrangement on an easel, placed beside or behind the casket. This is the default for friends, coworkers, neighbours, church groups and anyone outside the immediate family. If you only remember one thing from this page, remember that a standing spray is almost always the right answer.
• Casket spray. The piece that sits on top of the casket. This one is traditionally sent by the immediate family only - spouse, children, parents. If you are not in that group, do not order one, because the family has almost certainly already arranged it.
• Basket or floor arrangement. A large arrangement that sits on the floor or on a pedestal. Softer and less formal than a spray, and a good choice when there will be a lot of pieces in a small room.
• Wreath or cross. Traditional, and still very much used here. A cross is a religious statement, so send one only if you know the family will read it the way you mean it.
• Inside-the-casket pieces. Casket pillows and small tributes tucked beside the person. Family only, and always cleared with the funeral director first.

What to send to the house

Home flowers are the opposite. They need to survive on a kitchen counter in a house full of people, without anyone having to do anything to them.

Send a vase arrangement, not a spray. Keep it low enough to see over if it is going on a table. Make sure it comes in its own container so nobody has to hunt for a vase or return one later. And do not send something enormous - the family is going to be handling a lot of deliveries that week, and a piece that takes up half a counter becomes one more thing to manage.

Plants are worth considering too. A peace lily or an orchid keeps going long after cut flowers are gone, which some people find comforting and others find like homework. If you knew the person well enough to know which type the family is, use that.

The timing part, which is where people get caught

Funeral homes need flowers one to two hours before the service starts, not at the start of it. Staff have to set the room, and a delivery that arrives during a service does not get set out at all.

Work backwards from the service time, not from the day. A 10am service means flowers need to be there by 8am, which in practice means we are building it the afternoon before. A 2pm service can often be handled that morning.

Our same-day cutoff is 12pm for delivery that afternoon anywhere in Bakersfield. For anything tied to a service time, call us at (661) 588-7997 rather than ordering online, because we will want to confirm the funeral home, the service time and the family name before we start.

What to write on the card

Short is better than clever. Nobody has ever regretted keeping it simple.

• "With deepest sympathy from the Hernandez family."
• "Thinking of you all. He was a good man and we will miss him."
• "With love from everyone at the shop."
• "There are no words. We are here if you need anything."

Sign it with the name the family will recognise. "Mike from work" is more useful to a grieving person than a full formal name they have to place.

Do the colours matter?

Less than people think. White and green is the traditional choice and always reads correctly. But if the person loved yellow, send yellow. We have built sympathy pieces in bright orange for a woman whose whole house was orange, and it was the right call.

The one place tradition still holds is that very informal, very bright grocery-store colour schemes can look out of place in a formal service room. If you are unsure, tell us about the person and let us build to that.

A note on lilies

Stargazer and oriental lilies are beautiful, long-lasting and heavily scented. In a large open church that scent is lovely. In a small viewing room with thirty other arrangements, it can be overwhelming, and the pollen stains anything it touches.

We remove the anthers on every lily that leaves our studio for this reason. If you know the family has a sensitive nose, or a cat at home, say so and we will build without them.

If you are not sure, just call

This is the one category where we would genuinely rather talk to you than take an online order. Tell us the funeral home, the service time, your relationship to the family and roughly what you want to spend, and we will tell you exactly what to send. It takes about two minutes and it removes the risk of getting it wrong at a moment when you do not have the attention to spare.

(661) 588-7997 - we are on Brimhall Road, and someone who actually builds the arrangements will pick up.

Sympathy flowers for the service or something for the family's home.