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The Maryland event florist, 52, opened her Laurel, MD flower shop, The Blooming Bohemian, three years ago after decades of working for other people.
Thankfully, she's been blessed, she said. Beyond blessed, having had a steady flow of business since the day she opened her doors, she said.
In Fall 2023, producers from Netflix's "Love Is Blind" contacted her and asked if she would do the floral arrangements for the Washington DC-based Season 7 weddings.
She did, and with the episodes expected to air this month on the mega-streaming platform, Sallee wants locals to know that she's right here in their backyard. And that anything is possible.
"If I had seen somebody that looked like me who told me owning my own business was achievable, I would’ve done it 20 years ago," Sallee said.
So now, she strives to be that person for others.
Sallee was raised in Missouri where her father taught agronomy at the University of Missouri, where Sallee often accompanied him to greenhouses. As a teen, Sallee's family moved to Boston, MA, when her dad took a job at the Generics Institute as a plant genetics scientist in Cambridge, through a partnership with Harvard University.
After finishing high school at an agricultural school in Massachusetts, Sallee attended Penn State University, where she majored in large animal husbandry.
To put herself through school, Sallee worked at flower shops. She says she was always drawn to floral arranging but never had the experience, so all she was allowed to do was sweep up roses.
"I fell in love with it from day one," Sallee said. "I used to watch the designers and I'd stay late just to watch them do events. I noticed how they did things and absorbed everything. I became a student of what people were doing."
She noticed the nuances. For example, florists' interactions with black customers seemed different from those with the white customers, she said.
"I felt they didn’t give our clients the same type of care or attention or understanding," Sallee said, often thinking to herself: "If I ever get a chance to do this, I’m going to do this my way."
But being that she never saw another black florist, Sallee didn't have the courage to launch her own business, she said: "I didn’t think it was attainable."
After college, Sallee went to visit a friend in Maryland and never left. Columbia became her home, and Sallee went on to work at different flower shops in the area.
Finally, in 2021, Sallee took a leap of faith and signed the lease of her current flower shop, the Blooming Bohemian in Laurel, specializing as an event florist.
"I had no idea if it was going to work," she said. "I specialize in bohemian, and so many people said, 'We don't have that in this community.' I was told that it's very conservative in Washington DC and brides don't want boho.
"That is so not true," she said. "We are not this monolithic community."
Late last summer, Sallee was contacted by producers of "Love Is Blind," asking if she'd be open to doing the floral arrangements for the Netflix show. Sallee doesn't typically watch "Love Is Blind," but has seen prior seasons as she knew other florists who did the weddings.
Sallee said it all happened very fast.
"It was an experience unlike any other," Sallee said on a call with Daily Voice. "I've worked big events, but not that many big events in that short amount of time, in that type of turnaround."
She had three months to prepare for the weddings, where the couples — who met behind a wall and based their connection purely on their intellectual connections — would either agree to spend the rest of their lives together, or break up.
Some didn't even make it to the altar after meeting face-to-face.
The show's producers communicated the brides' floral visions to Sallee around September 2023. Then, Sallee was given full creative control ahead of the November 2023 weddings.
"We basically had three days to shoot full weddings and receptions," she said. "They all had to look different."
Sallee, who had a team of six designers, said in the days leading up to the weddings, she was getting "minute-to-minute" updates from producers.
During the weddings, Sallee rented a cabin and stayed with her team every night, waking up at 6 a.m. to shoot 12- or 15-hour days.
"There were many nights where we had hair dryers just trying to keep the flowers from freezing overnight," Sallee said.
Sallee couldn't divulge much more about the show, which releases new episodes every Wednesday on Netflix, but feels proud of her work.
She hopes other aspiring florists will see her work and know what's possible for them, no matter their race.
"It's so important to be in a community and to mentor other designers that work with me," she said. "I make a point to do it because I don't want anybody else to not do this thing that I love because of fear or uncertainty.
"I want people to know that I’m in their local community. When brides come to me, they're surprised to hear I'm here. They think that they have to go into DC to find an event florist to understand what they want. It's important to be here in the backyard. In Prince George's County."
Click here for The Blooming Bohemian for everyday arrangements and here for events.
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