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Winsome Wil of Willits Flowers<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n By Ren\u00e9e Tillotson<\/b><\/p>\n \n <\/span><\/p>\n When your one and only daughter is marrying the man of her dreams, and you get the chance to create all the floral pieces for her wedding, you pull out all the stops. At least I did. I found the nearest florist to the wedding location (still 45 minutes away over a dirt country road) and ordered the perfect flower varieties, ornamental grasses and greenery well in advance to make all the floral pieces we would be needing. I had no idea at the time how invaluable Willits Flowers and its owner Wil Gonzalez AIFD (American Institute of Floral Designers) would be to the entire process of our floral creation.<\/span><\/p>\n Wil is a man devoted to his craft like no one I\u2019ve met before, as you will soon learn.<\/span><\/p>\n I faced only one hitch that I knew of going into this endeavor: I would have no refrigeration available at the wedding site for storing the flowers, and we were anticipating temperatures over 90 degrees in the foothills of Northern California. I just couldn\u2019t see my way around that problem. Oh well, I thought, I\u2019ll do my best with the situation.<\/span><\/p>\n I had no idea what a can-do man I was working with when I decided to get my fresh flowers from Wil Sanchez. As soon as he received my elaborate, 50-line spreadsheet of all the flower kinds and colors I needed, Wil secured with his suppliers the necessary flowers, berries, greens and grasses I would need for our daughter\u2019s Saturday wedding.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cNow, when will you be picking your flowers up?\u201d Wil inquires.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWould 8 am on Saturday be too early for you?\u201d I wonder.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wil asks, \u201cWhen is the wedding?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell, it\u2019s at 5 pm on Saturday,\u201d I reply.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat? You can\u2019t do that!\u201d Wil objects vehemently. \u201cThere\u2019s just so much that can go wrong! You\u2019re making a cascading bridal bouquet, and 7 bridesmaid bouquets, plus a couple dozen corsages and boutonnieres, and four large wedding arbor arrangements? All on the same day as the wedding?!? That is simply not enough time!\u201d (Dear reader, I hope that I am adequately conveying the passion this man has for his trade. He is ardent.)<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d I explain, \u201cEmandal is a farm, and we won\u2019t have access to refrigeration for our flowers. It\u2019s not the way I like to do it, but I don\u2019t really have any option but to start early and work fast on the day of the wedding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s where the magic comes in. \u201cAllow me to make a suggestion,\u201d says Wil. His voice has gotten low and very steady. \u201cHow about if you come to my flower shop on Friday and put all your pieces together here? You can store everything in my walk-in cooler overnight and come pick up the finished flowers the next day for the wedding.<\/span><\/p>\n Since he is talking to me over the phone, he can\u2019t see my eyes almost bursting out of their sockets in surprise. \u201cYou would let me do that? Really?\u201d I manage to squeak out.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOf course!\u201d he assures me. \u201cWe\u2019re in a small town. I get farmers calling me at 6 in the morning sometimes, saying, \u2018You gotta help me! It\u2019s my 25<\/span>th<\/span> wedding anniversary and I forgot to get anything for my wife.\u2019 Then I ask what the guy wants to order, and he says, \u2018Let me call you right back! I gotta go feed my pigs first.\u2019 Then we take care of him, and his wife is happy. So now your daughter is getting married. I\u2019m honored to be providing you with flowers for such a special occasion, and we want them to look their best. I\u2019ll have one of my employees meet you in in our shop on Friday at 8 am.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n And indeed he does just that. Wil\u2019s employee SuuZe (short for Suzanne) meets me and my dear friend Marta at the shop on Friday morning. SuuZe takes us into their walk-in and wows us with the lovely array of flowers Wil has picked out for us from his professional suppliers at the San Francisco Flower Mart. Really the best of the best. All the flower heads are at the perfect stage of development to be open just enough, and not too much, for our daughter\u2019s wedding the next afternoon.<\/span><\/p>\n Even though he runs a second shop in the town of Ukiah, Wil arranges to be in the Willits shop himself that Friday in case we need any help beyond the excellent service that SuuZe can give us. That turns out to be another godsend.<\/span><\/p>\n As Wil deftly selects and arranges his flowers, we get to see how truly devoted he is to his art and the people he serves. He is making the funeral flowers for a man he has known well and long. As he works on his flowers and Marta and I begin working on ours, Wil tells us warm stories of this gentleman and his wife. Wil counsels us on how important it is to think of the people whose flowers we\u2019re arranging. (Sooze tells us later that Wil was shedding tears at his workbench the whole time he was making that gentleman\u2019s floral display.)<\/span><\/p>\n By the time we\u2019re ready to make the corsages and boutonnieres, my sister-in-love Karin has arrived to help us. At this juncture, I have a big question: How are we going to pin boutonnieres onto men\u2019s suspenders? I\u2019ve never faced that challenge, but I\u2019ve purchased a lot of different supplies in advance, certain we\u2019ll figure out a clever solution. I am glad Wil is there for advice.<\/span><\/p>\n As I pull out my options of oversized safety pins, electrical clips, and lengths of elastic, Wil is vigorously shaking his head. \u201cNo, no, no. None of that is going to work. This is a wedding. You need something that is going to be elegant.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n At this point I\u2019m mystified. I was sure we were well provisioned to handle the suspender problem. Now I\u2019m feeling lost.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhat you really need to do is make floral jewelry,\u201d he informs me.<\/span><\/p>\n Floral jewelry? Never heard of it. I\u2019ve done the flowers for lots of friends and family over the decades and never seen \u2018floral jewelry\u2019.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Wil is both eager and impatient at the same time. He has plenty of other things to accomplish in his workday, but he just can\u2019t bear to let us make a mess of perfectly good flowers.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cLet me see. Let me see,\u201d he mutters as he rummages through his worktable and cupboards.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He pulls out a roll of thin metallic ribbon, some sticky tape sheets, and a can of special glue, all the while explaining to us that the floral industry has made technological advances that only cutting-edge floral designers know about. He happens to be one of them. Of course. This man is top-notch.<\/span><\/p>\n With a set of pincers, he shows us how to cut and roll the edges of the metallic ribbon to create a tiny platform for our jewelry. He asks for the key floral elements of our wedding design \u2013 a small ivory rose, a sprig of olive and another of seeded eucalyptus, a dollar eucalyptus leaf, a stalk of wheat, some hypericum berries, a stem of rabbit tail grass, and a streamer of amaranth. These he quickly snips and clips into the proper dimensions, artistically affixes them to the metallic platform, and voil\u00e0! A BEAUTIFUL piece of floral jewelry that we can adhere directly onto the groom\u2019s suspenders and ladies\u2019 dresses.<\/span><\/p>\n