We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erin Iler and Suzanne Grycel a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Erin and Suzanne, you’ve got such an interesting story, but before we jump into that, let’s first talk about a topic near and dear to us – generosity. We think success, happiness and wellbeing depends on authentic generosity and empathy and so we’d love to hear about how you become such a generous person – where do you think your generosity comes from?
Generosity is infectious. As you know we are a family owned business, we have learned through the generations of our family what it means to be generous. From our great grandmother who was a single mom of 4 children in the 1940s during World War II, she still found the means to donate her time and her beautiful clippings from her garden to friends, church members, and the Pasadena community. She found time to still think of others.
Through the generations, we were instilled with the family value to help and to be kind to others. We have learned empathy and always try to think of other people’s perspectives. Everyone has life moments that can cause adversity or challenges from emotional to financial burdens, to everything in between.
We know life can be hard, with many challenges but if we can bring joy to an individual , for one of their momentous events in their life, then we feel we have succeeded!
Hence, with our business, we truly do not want to turn anyone away. Every bride deserves to have their floral dreams brought to life and to be treated special. We do not have a minimum. We truly believe we would not meet the wonderful people, diverse couples, if we excluded some individuals based on a monetary requirement.
In our business, we want to be remembered for spreading love and kindness like wildflowers. Our mantra is. . .We never close the doors to anyone because you never know what windows they may open for us.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Iler Meadows is a family-owned wedding florist based in Monrovia, CA. The mother-and-daughter duo have been in business for over three years, working closely with each client throughout the process, going above and beyond to make each floral vision a reality.
Floral designers, Erin and Suzanne Iler love the emotion and joy that flowers can bring. They specialize in timeless arrangements that reflect the natural beauty of meadows. Suzanne comes from a family with a long history of floristry, and she is excited to share this passion with the couples she gets to work with. Erin loves to include her passion for writing to chronicle the different floral projects they work on and share this with the public to view.
The team at Iler Meadows will create a vision board that works with your ideas and wishes for the day while being mindful of your budget. They can create arrangements with either fresh or dried flowers. Their fresh flowers are sourced from growers across southern California, and they also work with selected vendors from the Los Angeles Flower Market. Some of the arrangements they can create include bouquets, aisle and altar decor, and centerpieces.
A new service that we launched in Autumn 2023 is the Bouquet Bar. We adorned a baby shower and a corporate event with this fun bar for guests.
Bouquet Bars can be used at Baby Showers, Bridal Showers, Engagement Parties, Weddings, Corporate Events and so much more! Delight your guests into making their own bouquet to take home from the event.
What does it include?
5-8 buckets of fresh florals (based on amount of guests)
3 buckets of fresh greens of your choice
3 hours of service from Iler Meadows Team
Each guest will choose 3-4 fresh stems, along with greenery, wrapped with recycled brown paper sleeves and a lovely ribbon.
Watch your guests be creative and take home a sentimental gift!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
“We learned about honesty and integrity, that the truth matters. . . that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules. . .and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.” – Michelle Obama
This quote exemplifies what we believe. Our top 3 qualities we feel is important for someone at the beginning stages of a business journey is building integrity, building relationships, and leading with kindness.
At the beginning of our journey, we had to give a lot of ourselves not expecting any monetary return. We had to build trust with other businesses, clients, and build an honest portfolio. We spent a lot of time designing for styled photo shoots, bouquets for photographers, pro bono weddings, wedding expos for free, delivering florals to our community, and more.
We put in countless hours of designing to show our style and our artistic ability.
For relationship building, we try to either have zoom consultations or meet in person. Instead of just providing quotes to potential clients, we truly feel we need to get to know each client before we begin our business relationship. We need to know if we are compatible and if we can bring a floral vision to life. We put our heart and soul into each event and we want to make sure we truly understand the floral vision for a client’s special day.
We also like to get to know all of our vendors. We want to know the owners of the flower farms, the photographers we work with, the wedding coordinators, and the list goes on! We believe in creating a family network among our business and the businesses we collaborate with.
In terms of kindness, we lead with our hearts. We listen to each individual’s story and then we are able to make specific recommendations for florals. Once we hear a person’s story, we feel empowered to create this vision, because we are telling a story from their culture, their religion, to their family traditions.
Three years later, we still are very mindful to give back to our community, to refer our clients to our preferred vendors, and to foster relationships with the clients we have designed for. The three qualities that were in the forefront of our early stages of building our brand is still guiding us with each client.
Looking back over the past 12 months or so, what do you think has been your biggest area of improvement or growth?
Our biggest area of growth is that we have expanded our floral services. We initially started as a wedding florist three years ago. However, in this past year, we challenged ourselves to start designing and be more open to various opportunities for floral designing.
From corporate events, to styled photoshoots, to graduations, to religious celebrations, to a multitude of showers, to momentous birthday celebrations, we are expanding what Iler Meadows can offer in floral designs and services.
We are so excited to have past clients returning to us for floral needs and referring us to friends and family. We get so excited to hear about their lives and where life is taking them.
WE are also so excited to share that we now offer our services for destination weddings. We have designed at Catalina Island, out of state, and work with a variety of clients who live out of state that are flying to California for a destination wedding.
We cannot wait to see what the future holds for Iler Meadows and how our floral services continue to grow and bring joy to individuals.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ilermeadows.com
- Instagram: @iler_meadows
Image Credits
Shelby Ayn Photography Mark de Leon Photography Cassidyo photography Tida Svy Photography Adam Griffin Photo Britta Swoboda Photography
