I Tracked Every Trend Prediction I Made Last Year. My Score: 8 Out of 10.

I told my business partner Lena in January that café au lait dahlias were about to peak and die, and I need everyone to know I was right.

Every year I sit down in December with my notes from the flower market, my order history, and whatever I've been seeing on installation floors from Georgetown to the Navy Yard, and I make ten trend predictions for the coming year. Then — and this is the part most people skip — I actually go back and grade myself. This year I went 8 out of 10, which is honestly better than I expected, so I'm writing the whole thing down before I get too humble about it.

What I Got Right

The café au lait call was prediction number one. I'd been watching them dominate wedding mood boards for three years straight and I said out loud, in front of witnesses, that 2024 was the year brides would collectively decide they were "over it." Sure enough, by late spring my couples were actively saying "no café au laits" in their intake forms. That flower went from aspirational to a walking red flag faster than I've ever seen a trend collapse. It's not dead-dead — it's just lost the plot.

Prediction two: chocolate cosmos would become a florist's darling, not just an Instagram curiosity. I started stocking them consistently from my growers in Virginia and I couldn't keep them in the cooler. The color story around deep burgundy, rust, and terracotta wasn't slowing down, and chocolate cosmos fit right in the middle of that without trying too hard. Correct.

I also called the return of sweet peas as a serious design element rather than just filler, and this one gave me actual joy to be right about. Sweet peas went through a decade of being treated like parsley — just something you throw in around the edges. This year I watched designers at the market in Bladensburg grabbing them intentionally, leading with them. I built three full wedding installations anchored entirely in sweet peas, ranunculus, and lisianthus, and they were some of the most photographed work I've done. Vindicated.

Four through eight I'll go faster through: sculptural alliums as a year-round element (yes), the move away from full blowsy garden arrangements toward something more considered and architectural (yes), single-variety bunches as a premium retail product rather than a budget play (yes), dried elements falling out of favor in wedding work specifically (yes, finally), and peonies losing their status as the default "luxury" shorthand (correct, though I'm watching closely — they're staging a comeback).

The flower market doesn't lie. If you pay attention to what the serious designers are pulling at 5am on a Tuesday, you know what's going to be everywhere by June.

What I Missed

Prediction nine was that fritillaria would break into mainstream event floristry in DC. I was wrong. Completely wrong. I thought the moment was there — the dangling bells, the unexpected texture, the way it photographs — but fritillaria stayed firmly in the "florist's flower" category. Clients didn't ask for it. Designers used it quietly but never loudly. I still love it. I'm still using it. But I oversold the cultural moment and I'm owning that.

Prediction ten: I said calla lilies were coming back. I know. I said what I said. I had a theory that the 90s minimalism revival was going to drag callas back into relevance because of their architectural lines and their sheer nerve. It has not happened. The calla remains in the land of funeral parlors and very specific quinceañeras, and no amount of editorial shoots is rescuing it right now. Maybe 2025. I'm not ready to give up entirely.

What I'm Watching That I Didn't Predict

The thing nobody on my list was talking about: the wild, asymmetrical, almost uncomfortable arrangement. Not wabi-sabi in the way that became a trend tagline — I mean genuinely off-balance work where a single stem of tweedia or an odd-angle branch of quince just hangs out where it shouldn't be. I've been seeing it in the most high-end installations and I think it's a direct reaction to the years of perfectly composed, highly Instagrammable floristry that started to look the same everywhere. It's the anti-arrangement arrangement. I'm into it.

Also: lisianthus having an actual moment. Not as filler. Not as a peony substitute for budget clients. As itself — specifically the double varieties in that particular dusty mauve that's somewhere between lavender and grey. I've been designing with them intentionally all fall and they make people stop and stare. That's the sign. When a client who doesn't know flower names points at something and says "what is THAT," that's a flower about to trend.

• Chocolate cosmos: fully arrived, use them now before everyone does
• Sweet peas: lead with them, stop hiding them
• Lisianthus (double varieties, dusty mauve specifically): watch this space
• Café au lait dahlias: rest, recuperate, return in a few years
• Fritillaria: I'm not giving up on you, just recalibrating

Why I Do This Exercise Every Year

Because it keeps me honest. It's easy to have opinions. It's harder to write them down with a timestamp and then go back and look at them. Every florist has a sixth sense for what's coming — you develop it from years of market mornings and client conversations and watching what's showing up on Italian editorial pages six months before it hits DC. But that instinct only sharpens if you actually test it against reality.

I went 8 out of 10. I'm proud of that. I'm also already writing next year's list, and I have a feeling about hellebores that I'm not ready to say out loud yet.