Flowers on the anniversary of a death are welcome, and they often mean more than the ones sent in the funeral week, because by now the visits have stopped. Send a vase arrangement to the home, timed for the day itself or the day before, in soft whites and creams or in the color the person loved, with a short card that uses their name. Order a day or two ahead. The card is the hard part, a year on.
A year on, send something for the kitchen table
Funeral flowers are often large pieces on easels. This one can be smaller, the kind of arrangement that sits by the coffee maker and gets looked at every morning that week. For the family's home, our FAQ suggests "something more intimate, a vase arrangement they can keep." When the loss is a dog or a cat, our guide to pet sympathy flowers suggests something small, in soft colors, with a card that uses the pet's name.
On color, the FAQ answer on what to send for a funeral or memorial service leans toward white, with soft cream and soft green that "feel deeply respectful," and a year later that still holds. Our sympathy guide allows soft pastels too, and notes that some families prefer "bright, joyful colors that celebrate the person's life." If you knew the person, you probably know their color. Use it. Put it in the checkout note, something like "his favorite was the deep blue of his old truck," and the designer has something real to work from.
For a first anniversary, the FAQ's advice for sympathy tributes still fits: "Deluxe or Premium is almost always the right choice." On a kitchen counter, a Deluxe is plenty. Where a design comes in more than one size, the Deluxe is the same design as the Standard, noticeably fuller and taller. The sympathy and funeral collection has ten designs to start from.
Most of the time it goes to the house
The usual address is the home of the person carrying the loss, often a spouse or a grown child. Include a phone number they answer. When the driver is on the way, the recipient gets a text, and if nobody comes to the door, the driver leaves it in the shade with a note saying where.
Send it to an office only if you know the person well, since some people would sooner open a card like this at home. If you do, mark the address as commercial at checkout and add the suite or floor.
Often the person who remembers the date lives far away. If you are a sister in another state and cannot be there on the day, the FAQ says you "enter your billing details and the recipient's Raleigh (or Cary, Durham, Chapel Hill) address, write your card message, and we handle everything." Enter your ZIP for the current delivery charge.
A memorial service or celebration of life held weeks or months after a cremation follows the timing in our sympathy guide, with flowers delivered "the day before or the morning of the service." For a church, the guide says to "confirm the address and timing with the family or the venue." Family staying at a hotel for the service can receive flowers there too; ask the hotel first how it handles guest deliveries.
Flowers for a memorial table, the one with the photograph and sometimes the urn, start with a quick question to the family about how much room there is. A Standard or Deluxe vase sits beside a framed photo and leaves the photo as the thing people walk up to.
When the date falls on a Sunday
We do not deliver on Sundays. When the anniversary falls on one, pick Saturday or Monday. Saturday puts the flowers in the house as the day approaches, while family may still be visiting. A Monday delivery comes after the weekend, once the phone calls have stopped. Either one tells them you had the date written down.
A day or two of notice is enough. If the date crept up on you, same-day delivery works for a smaller arrangement sent right away; enter your ZIP for today's cutoff. A larger piece, especially one for a service, is worth ordering ahead so it can be made properly.
The first holidays can be harder than the anniversary. Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26 this year, and flowers that arrive in the days before it are on the table when the family sits down with one chair that feels different. A card for that week can be lighter than you expect: "[Name] would have carved the turkey badly and loudly. Thinking of all of you this week." December is the same.
You get a photo of the arrangement before it leaves the studio, so you see it before they do. Brady Sewall's order was for his own family, in grief, and he wrote in his review, "Thank you so much for your talent and giving my grieving family some joy on a heartbreaking new morning." The same review says, "This studio follows up with images before being sent which I appreciated."
Write their name on the card
The card holds up to 300 characters, in your words, and checkout reminds you to sign your name. Sign it clearly, because on this date the family will want to know who thought of them. The sympathy guide's advice still applies a year later: "You don't need to be eloquent. You just need to be there."
Write their name. A year on, it may be the word the person you are writing to hears least. Add one small true thing if you have one. A message for flowers on the anniversary of a death can be as short as "Thinking of you and of [name] today. Love, [your name]." Or it can carry a memory: "One year. We still tell the story about [name] and the canoe. With love, [your name]."
Any design from the sympathy and funeral collection fits the day, and Designer's Choice can be made in their color if you put it in the checkout note.
The date explains why the flowers came. Let it.