It may be that you need to set yourself some sort of 'achievable' goal and then evaluate what you need to do in order to achieve it.
Sort of reminds me of the joke about women and shopping..Like, what are you looking for? I don't know, but i'll know when i see it!. You can do that all day long and sometimes go home with nothing.

So the phrase 'working with flowers' covers such wide range of activities at both ends of the market and everywhere in between.

I'll assume you don't want to run a market stall selling bunches of flowers, else you wouldn't be talking about college training. There are a few options. You can specialise in one area or try and encompass all of them.

Let's assume you want to specialise in wedding flowers and not worry about anything else. You still have some choices to make as there are differing 'target markets' within this category. A lot of brides are 'on a budget' (isn't everybody?) so they will look for a florist who appears to be reasonably priced but still as good as a top designer. (if that makes sense!). So if you create an image for yourself of being 'reasonably priced' and doing a lot of budget weddings, you may well not attract the clients who want the best and are prepared to pay for it. (like...who did your flowers darling?...oh really!) You get what i mean.

On the other hand, you can aim for a very upmarket image for which you will need a lot of 'street cred' in the way of recognised qualifications, testimonials, experience, etc. At this level you will probably not even get phone calls from people looking for a 'budget wedding'.

How far will you be prepared to travel in order to gain clients and keep busy. Will you be happy doing the occasional wedding or do you want to be busy all the time.

You need to look at the area you are going to cover and try and gauge the ratio of 'upmarket/budget' weddings. How do you do that? Given the time, you could visit/phone every church and wedding venue in your area and enquire as to the 'rough' percentage of 'lots of flower/minimal flower' weddings in the past year.

You could try and get to know people at some of the wedding venues in your area. Ask if they would mind you dropping in after the florist has finished doing the flowers and before the guests arrive just to have a quick look at the flowers. Most will probably decline but if you explain why, they may be receptive.

Get up in the morning and go to a wholesale market. Try and find a wholesaler who is in the mood for chatting and ask about the types of flowers being ordered specifically for weddings. Have a look at all the flowers on sale. Take your digi camera (it's polite to ask before taking pictures). You can get most flower images off the net and build up your own reference library, but sometimes it's nice to have your own. Visit a sundries wholesaler. Most will only sell to the trade but won't mind you having a look if you say you are a student. Have a look at all the sundries available. Same applies, there are a lot of websites including smithers oasis that show the full range available.

Have a look at as many florist websites as you can and get some idea of the things being offered for weddings along with the prices and try and build up your own catalogue with average prices from this. look at the individual designs and see if you can work out for yourself how they are put together. Pick out a few designs, go out and buy the materials (a lot of florists won't sell you the mechanics, but if you get stuck just email me and i'll post everything to you.) then sit down one evening and have a go. What's the worst that can happen? you might waste a few flowers. But you will soon learn how difficult it is and how much you need to learn. You may even surprise yourself and say "hey, I can do this!) You certainly won't get the Spanish Inquisition knocking on your door asking why you are delving into the mysterious world of floristry!

It's all down to how much time/money you are prepared to invest. If/when you embark on a college course, you will need to do this anyway, so why not start now and see if you really want to have a go before you pack in your job.

There is still a lot of ground to cover here. Things like pricing, ordering stock, looking after stock (in the summer!), gaining clients, advertising, etc.

I'll call this 'Options in Floristry-Part 1' as there are so many other avenues to explore. Not to mention my exploring the aussie red wine on my desk at the moment which is bringing this chapter to a close.