It's the busiest day of the year for florists that sees blooms and balloons flying out the door. At Auckland's Tomuri and Co Valentine’s Day sale, demand saw 4500 pre-made bouquets sold, 1500 more bunches than they had planned for.
It was all hands on deck for Valentine’s Day and business was booming.
Ratahi Tomuri, Kaiwhakahaere (Ngapuhi, Tuwharetoa) says, "They just have to get it. The girlfriend wants the flowers and he doesn't want to get into trouble so it's up to him to sort of choose something. To put it into perspective we'd probably do 10 to fifteen times more volume than we would on an average day.
It's been four months of planning in the lead-up to today and these florists were up until midnight prepping orders.
Kirstin Lee, (Te Rarawa, Te Arawa) says, "[It's] pretty insane but we did have a lot of things done last night which gave us a better start to this morning."
And roses weren't the only goodies leaving this store.
Tomuri says, "Flowers with rolls of cash in it. In the back there's those bubble balloons. So we've had those as an add-on, we've had chocolates and we've had a $25,000 diamond ring."
Tomuri says he had to import roses to meet consumer demand, and this year he hired a 35ft chillier which was filled to the brim with flowers.
"Unfortunately New Zealand produce there just isn't enough to meet the demand here so a lot of buyers have to resort to getting imported lines because the quantities are larger and the price point is a lot better too," says Tomuri.
50,000 roses were sold here today and the demand was so great the team had to stop deliveries, while it's Botany store sold out of flowers before lunch.
Tomuri says, “We do have occasional Māori people come in but it's only a small percentage. I think they'd rather just spend it on kai because you can't eat roses can you?"
After the mad rush will come the clean up which Tomuri says is the least exciting part of his day.