How Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht Is Encouraging LGBTQ+ Couples to Go Big With Wedding Florals

For the designer, flowers are living art, maximalism is a form of resistance and modesty is never the answer

Kristenmain — Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht. Courtesy photo

Published: April 13, 2026 | Last Updated: April 13, 2026

Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht knows what holds LGBTQ+ couples back from their wildest floral dreams — and he’s here to tell them they don’t have to. The internationally lauded floral designer, named one of Harper’s Bazaar’s top florists, has made a career of bringing fantasy to life, with work in Vogue and on Netflix. “We all want the fantasy,” he says. “But sometimes we convince ourselves it’s not for us.”

It is, of course, within Griffith-VanderYacht’s ethos to tell you otherwise — that you deserve this. Or, as he puts it: "This one day out of 365 is for you. You get whatever your fantasy is. Tell me what your fantasy is. Then let's work backwards from there."

Griffith-VanderYacht’s love of flowers began in his mother’s Palmer Woods backyard, among rows of peonies and "The Bodyguard" soundtrack on cassette. “It was the right combination for my little gay ass to flourish in,” he says of those young, carefree years.

Since May, Griffith-VanderYacht has led in-house floral design at Planterra Conservatory, a family-owned botanical garden and event space in West Bloomfield, with services extending to off-site venues. There's a dedicated on-site studio, oversized coolers and a staff equipped to support transformational design ideas.

"We can take a blank space and turn it into a jungle," he says. Planterra got on his radar when he moved back to the Detroit area from Seattle, and it stood out immediately. "It's very rare that something has such an astounding reputation," he says, adding that history and caliber don't always go hand in hand — but here, they do. "I found that to be really intriguing."

David L. Di Vincenzo, vice president and creative director of Planterra, was drawn to his ability to “treat florals as living design.” “What I also appreciate about Kristen is that, despite his talent, he doesn’t take floral design too seriously; he approaches it with a genuine sense of joy,” Di Vincenzo says. “Flowers are a language, and after many years of designing, one naturally develops a personal vocabulary of blooms. It has been both energizing and refreshing for Kristen to bring his own floral vocabulary into the creative dialogue with our team.”

Before returning to Michigan to take up the post at Planterra, Griffith-VanderYacht owned Wild Bloom, his own floral design studio in Seattle. But his career began in New York, where he interned at Sprout Home in Brooklyn, trained under head designer Doan Ly and eventually launched his own studio — first called Full Aperture Floral, later rebranded as Wild Bloom. New York put him on the map in other ways, too: running to drop off bouquets for New York Magazine's open call, he burst into the photoshoot and ended up in front of photographer Erik Madigan Heck. Griffith-VanderYacht snagged a two-page spread in the magazine.

In 2017, Griffith-VanderYacht curated over 2,000 flowers for "Burlesque" actress Julianne Hough's outdoor wedding in Idaho — his first celebrity wedding. For him, it was "a really big moment, to be able to enter that space and be trusted with her wedding."

His work has since brought pops of color to some of the biggest magazines — Vogue, Town & Country, New York Magazine, People and Martha Stewart Weddings — and on TV, his designs have been featured on E! and "Good Morning America." And in 2020, he was featured on the Netflix series "The Big Flower Fight," self-described as the show's "sassy head judge with a big heart."

Doing flowers in Detroit, he says, is a different universe from New York, where he cut his teeth. "Anyone who's ever driven in New York City, or taken a taxi in New York City, can imagine just what trying to deliver to a wedding in the middle of Times Square at a restaurant is like,” he says, comparing it to "The Amazing Race." At Planterra, the logistics recede and the flowers take center stage, plus he has always admired Detroit for being a "real town for artists," from murals to Motown artists and even the area's culinary scene.

"After spending so much time away," he says, "to have the opportunity to share my art and work with couples and create beautiful weddings here is such an exciting time in my life."

Always more, never less

Designing for a wedding means designing for two people at one of the most emotionally heightened moments of their lives. Griffith-VanderYacht knows that to make the flowers work, he first has to make the relationship work — at least the one between him and his clients. Trust, he's learned, is the precondition for beauty.

"My job is to empower you to make the best design decisions you can for your special day," he says. "And within that, I have to advocate for you. And advocating for you is telling you: No girl, that's an ugly combo."

Kristen2 — Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht. Courtesy photo

For every couple, he has one relatively simple goal: "When you are walking into your reception room, or you walk into your ceremony, you walk in feeling excited and a little bit relieved, but more than anything, surprised."

Kelcie and Noelle Ferrara-Gershon, who married at Planterra in May 2025, said Griffith-VanderYacht’s floral designs “beautifully complemented” the venue’s existing greenery, with an arrangement over the stone arch in their ceremony space honoring their Jewish heritage.

“We wanted to have a lot of greenery and for the florals to add to, rather than overshadow, the already beautiful venue,” Kelcie says. “We received so many compliments on how the bouquets were gorgeous and the deep burgundy’s blended with the green and gold colors of our day so elegantly.”

For queer couples, he encourages out-of-the-box thinking — flowers have no gender here, and maximalism is not just welcome but encouraged. "When it comes to flowers, you can never have too much," he says. It's a philosophy that doubles as an invitation: to be seen, to take up space, to resist the impulse to shrink. "I try to encourage them to face whatever internalized homophobia they might be having."

"The simple act of getting married for queer couples is already an affirmation, and in many ways, in defiance of the norms, in defiance of what people and society has told you you're allowed to do for hundreds and hundreds of years. So just go full tilt, embrace it, go all out. Modesty is just not something I would encourage. Go big. The goal is to only do this once."

There's also a more practical case for going all out, and it comes down to the attention span of the guests. "You have three seconds to make an impression before somebody has gotten distracted and moved on. You gotta hit them upside the head when they first walk through the door."

Maximalism, he notes, is back in full force — no more simple white and green motifs — and he sees it running parallel to the broader interior design shift away from millennial gray toward wood finishes, gilded details and old-library warmth. He's also excited about tribute arrangements honoring loved ones or pets who can't be there, statement ceremony backdrops like arches, hoops and flower walls, and escort card tables reimagined as installation moments — cards tied to individual bud vases that guests collect on arrival, then bring to their seats, where the vases become the centerpieces.

Since Griffith-VanderYacht lives and breathes flowers, he's thinking about the things most people aren't, including what he believes most people fundamentally misunderstand about them. "Their presence, their form, their color, their fragrance — all of this is an actual, living, real-life, tangible miracle," he says. "It's living art."

It also means thinking about why flowers feel disposable — and why consumerism is to blame. "They're too disposable. You go to a grocery store, they're right there; they're 3 bucks. Imagine if we took those flowers away. All of a sudden, they're a commodity."

The problem, he says, runs deeper than price tags. "We are so obsessed with consumerism and how to get the biggest bang for our buck that we have completely misread the purpose and have misaligned our values for what our relationship to flowers should be. Our understanding, especially in America, and our relationship with flowers needs some work."

Flowerlove — Kristen Griffith-VanderYacht's book "Flower Love" was published in 2023.

It's a message he's been taking on the road — most recently to daytime TV. Earlier this year, he appeared on "The Drew Barrymore Show," where Barrymore called his book, "Flower Love," "a coffee table piece of art" and "elevated but instructive." When co-host Ross Mathews asked for advice on preserving flowers, Griffith-VanderYacht asked for his hand, then delivered something closer to a meditation than a tutorial: "Flowers are not supposed to last. Listen to me: They're not supposed to last. Their job is to help us stay in the present. They grow, they blossom, they thrive. And then they're gone."

It's a philosophy that extends well beyond the vase. In conversation, Griffith-VanderYacht's thoughts on ephemera touch every corner of his life, perhaps nowhere more pointedly than in his identity as a Black gay man navigating a very niche industry. Or as he puts it with characteristic flair: "If Grace Jones and RuPaul had a baby, that'd be me."

"I recognize that there are not a lot of florists who are male," says Griffith-VanderYacht, who was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2024. "There are not a lot of florists who are Black. And there are not a lot of florists who are male, Black and gay. That trifecta, you don't really see a ton in this industry."

That awareness carries with it a sense of responsibility. "I am standing on the shoulders of entertainers, public figures, designers, creatives, artisans and trailblazers," he continues. "So I want to make sure that any time I have an opportunity, I'm leaving the door open for other young artists to be able to walk through. I've always looked at very public spaces as an opportunity — not for me, but for designers and artists who look like me after me."

And he's thinking long term. "When I leave Planterra — or die, or retire, or whatever — I want them to still feel very confident that they can find another version of me for the next generation."