Hot Chocolatier owner Wendy Bucker puts a flower made of icing on an Oreo dipped in fine chocolate.EASTER SPENDINGConsumers will spend an average of $145 on Easter. Here’s how most of the money will be spent:* Holiday meal – $45* New clothes – $26* Candy – $21* Gifts – $21* Flowers – $9* Decorations – $9Source: National Retail Federation
Lori Elliott grew up in a flower shop. She was in elementary school back in 1977, when her mom, Jimmie Poe, started Jimmie’s Flowers in Cleveland, Tenn.
She remembers when every church-going woman wore a corsage on Easter Sunday, when her grandmother would keep her orchid corsage in the fridge and wear it for three weeks.
Those were busy days in the flower shop — it was easy to do 50 corsages during Easter weekend. Now she does 10, maybe.
“Honestly, for the last 10 years, we haven’t really had a big Easter,” said Elliott, who now co-owns the shop with her mother. “But this year, it has been crazy. We’ve done a lot of Easter lilies and tons of Easter basket arrangements.”