Flowers after a death aren't one order — they're usually three different things, arriving at different times, sometimes to different addresses, and a family often ends up coordinating all three without realizing that's what's happening.
What's included in flower coordination
- Sympathy arrangements for the service itself
- Memorial displays at the funeral home, venue, or graveside
- Ongoing remembrance deliveries afterward — for anniversaries, birthdays, or just because
Common mistakes families make handling this alone
- Ordering from one florist without comparing. Sympathy arrangement pricing varies between florists more than people expect, especially under time pressure.
- Missing the delivery window. Funeral homes and venues have specific times flowers need to arrive by; a late delivery can mean flowers show up after the service has already started.
- Relatives ordering separately and duplicating. When extended family isn't coordinated, multiple people often send similar arrangements to the same location, which is both a wasted expense and a logistics headache for whoever's managing the day.
- Not confirming the delivery address matches the current venue. Funeral arrangements sometimes change location late; a flower order placed against an outdated address can miss the event entirely.
How the process works
- Scope it. Your coordinator confirms what's needed — service arrangements, memorial displays, or both — and where each needs to go.
- Source it. A vetted florist is sourced and briefed on the specifics: venue, timing, any family preferences.
- Track delivery. Delivery windows are confirmed and tracked against the actual event schedule.
- Set up ongoing deliveries, if wanted. Remembrance deliveries for future dates get set up once, rather than remembered and reordered each time.
Pricing and how billing works
This runs through the marketplace model. Otherside keeps a card on file and bills it for vendor work; the vendor is paid their share, and Otherside keeps a coordination fee for sourcing, vetting, scheduling, and overseeing the work. Every charge is itemized and visible before it's made, with a 24-hour window to review and decline it — nothing gets billed without you seeing it first.
Vendor vetting and trust
End-of-life coordination means letting someone into a family's home and finances at the worst possible time to be careless about who that is. Every vendor goes through the same onboarding before they're allowed to work with a family: a background check through a third-party screening platform (typically clears in two to five business days), a certificate of insurance naming Otherside Life as an additional insured, a government-issued ID, and a signed vendor agreement. Annual re-verification keeps that current. None of this guarantees a particular outcome on a particular job — no background check does — but nobody gets listed without going through it first.
What a coordinator does, and doesn't do
A coordinator sources the vendor, briefs them on what the family needs, tracks the job to completion, and handles the billing and paperwork around it. They don't do the physical or licensed work themselves, and they don't tell you which option to pick, interpret documents or law, or step into a family dispute over how something should be handled. The people actually doing the work — the florist, the attorney, the crew — are independent professionals working under their own license, not Otherside employees.
For a starting list of real, currently-operating florists in the LA area, see Flower Vendors in the Los Angeles Area.
Getting started
See the Flowers coordination page for pricing tier context and to start a case, or talk to an account coordinator directly about your specific situation.