Brad Parker: Hi, My name is Brad Parker and my company is MyFlorist and we are in McLean, Virginia and what we want to look at now is helping you choose just the right arrangement for Valentine's Day. The number one choice and the right choice in the majority of the cases is a dozen long stem red roses. Why? Well, roses for centuries have been symbolic of love more than any other single flower and particularly red roses and it's also an American tradition on Valentine's Day and for many women it's the lifelong dream to receive a dozen long stem red roses on Valentine's Day. So my first choice would be to suggest a dozen long stem red roses. Now, first of all, what is a long stem rose?

Roses are graded in three different lengths. 40 cms are considered short, 50-60 cms are considered medium and 70-80 cms are considered to be long. For Valentines Day you want a dozen long stem red roses, such as these. When you have the long stem roses, you get a much fuller showy arrangement. So, that's one thing. It's not just a dozen red roses, but you want a dozen long stem roses that will really show well. Secondly, you want a good quality rose. Roses should in this stage when you receive them. You don't want them completely tight. If they are completely tight and they haven't started to open, it's what we called in the industry a bullet. They may never open. On the other hand, you want a rose that's completely wide open. Those roses would be old and they won't last that long. So, you want a rose that is maybe 20%-30% open. It will take another three to five days to fully open and another two or three days before they finally expire. So, you want the long stem roses and you want the right quality of the roses.

Next point I would like to make is that you want these long stem roses well-designed and with a nice complimentary flower. In this particular arrangement, the complimentary flower is what we call Baby's Breath or Gypsophilia, it's a beautiful pure white color and the red roses seem to just float on top of them and of course the contrast between the red and the white is absolutely lovely. It really completes the arrangement. So you want something that really shows well. That's part of the whole affect for your Valentines Day flowers. Now, some people want to know what should you expect to pay on Valentine's Day. Again, you want a quality long stem dozen of roses and it's going to depend a lot on what part of the country you are purchasing the roses. It's going to vary between $75 and a $125 on this holiday. If you are in the big cities like Chicago, New York, San Francisco you are probably going to pay up around a $125. If you are in Middle America and rural America, you are going to probably about $75.

Now, you may know that you want to send roses, but you don't want to send red roses, there are other options and perhaps the person that you want to send flowers to, you know that their favorite maybe pink or white or yellow and there are many different colors in roses for you to choose from. Here is one of my favorite these medium pink roses, absolutely lovely for Valentines Day. Pink is feminine, it's sensuous and it's romantic. It's one of my favorite colors for this holiday. So you don't have to just send red roses. Many different colors are also available and again, you have the sending of roses, which is such a traditional message on Valentine's Day of love. So, now that we have talked about roses perhaps you are one of those people who knows they want to send some flowers, beautiful flowers for Valentine's Day, but you know you don't want to send roses and that would put you in the category of about 25% of people on Valentine's Day.

We are going to talk about that in our next segment. It's exciting because you have lots of options.