Every year, Wildcats walk the halls full of decorated boards, adorned armbands, proposal posters, and fancy mums in celebration of the annual homecoming game. Many Wildcats come and go as the years go on, but flower shop businesses have always stayed busy providing mums and armbands to the community.
Business Owners Jonilyn Hanes and Perla Vigil have been hard at work making mums and armbands alike for this years homecoming celebration. Both businesses have created countless homecoming decor for the community, with this being Hanes’ ninth year making mums and vigils third. Both flower shops always look forward to Canadian’s annual homecoming celebration.
“Homecoming has always been one of the biggest sales of the year,” Vigil said. “It’s always been a popular tradition that doesn’t seem to get old.”
Hanes shared a similar sentiment towards the tradition. Homecoming is one of the best times for her business along with the general holidays and prom week.
“Not only is homecoming good for business, but so is Christmas, Mother’s Day, and Valentine’s Day,” Hanes said.
Mums started out as a simple corsage made up of one or two chrysanthemums (fall’s classic flower) to show school pride at homecoming events. Tradition has evolved and now days, mums have little to do with the actual flower. Instead, these elaborate homecoming adornments have become a rite of passage for Texas teens, and the bigger the better.
With both businesses constantly having to make new mums every year, some requests have certainly been more elaborate than others.
“The biggest mum I’ve ever made cost around $210, it pretty much went from your chest all the way down to your legs with lights all over,” Hanes said.
Both business owners have seen trends come and go, with some trends such as the phasing out of real flowers being standard for most modern mums. While others seem to follow trends that change from year to year.
“This year, I’ve gotten requests to do some designs with pink because of the Barbie movie. Other than that, I’d say it’s mostly stayed black and gold this year,” Vigil said.
While there haven’t been any requests for Oppenheimer themed mums as of right now, requests have been constantly flooding into both businesses since Homecoming is starting so soon this year.
“It’s definitely been a lot more stressful this year, everyone’s asking why it’s so early this year? Even for me, it came pretty fast,” Vigil said.
Regardless of how fast approaching homecoming was this year, both businesses always look forward to seeing their works of art be proudly displayed and worn by students in Canadian’s yearly celebration.
“I’m very excited to see people come into town,” Vigil said. “It’s always very emotional cause you get excited to see people who you aren’t even related to come back. It’s always crazy to see how much they’ve changed and grown as the years have gone by.”
