Sending Flowers to Russia from the USA: What You Need to Know

Every week we take orders from New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and smaller American cities from people trying to send flowers to a mother in Saint Petersburg, a girlfriend in Moscow, a colleague in Novosibirsk. The questions are almost always the same: will it actually arrive today, how do I pay from a US card, and what do I write for the address? These are fair questions, and the answers are more specific than most flower websites let on. Here is what we tell every American customer before they place an order.

The Time Zone Gap Is the First Thing to Solve

Saint Petersburg runs eight hours ahead of New York and eleven hours ahead of Los Angeles. That gap is the single most common reason American senders are surprised when same-day delivery is not available. If you are sitting in New York at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday evening and you want flowers delivered in Saint Petersburg that same calendar day, you are already looking at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning in Russia — the recipient is asleep and our couriers are not running. The practical rule is this: if you want same-day delivery in Russia, place your order before noon Eastern Time, which gives us a reasonable afternoon window on the Russian side. Orders placed between noon and 5 p.m. Eastern can usually be scheduled for early the next morning in Russia, which often works well for birthday surprises. Orders placed after 5 p.m. Eastern are almost always next-day Russian time, sometimes the morning after that depending on the destination city. Moscow and Saint Petersburg have the widest delivery windows because our couriers cover those cities continuously. Cities in Siberia — Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yekaterinburg — require a bit more lead time simply because of logistics within those cities, so add at least a half-day buffer when ordering for those addresses. Tell us the recipient's schedule when you can: a person who works a night shift or lives in a gated residential complex needs a tighter delivery window than someone who works from home.

Bouquets we can deliver

Bouquet of 3 white lilies

$48

★ 4.9 · 117 reviews

Mixed bouquet of 7 red roses and 8 alstroemerias

$85

★ 4.9 · 109 reviews

Mixed bouquet of 3 chrysanthemums and 3 alstroemerias

$45

★ 4.9 · 67 reviews

Bouquet of 11 red roses, Ecuador, 50 cm

$66

★ 4.9 · 67 reviews

How to Format a Russian Address So Delivery Actually Works

Russian addresses follow a structure that is almost the reverse of American convention, and getting it wrong is one of the top reasons deliveries are delayed. In Russia the address goes from large to small: country, city, street, building number, apartment number. A typical Saint Petersburg address looks like this: Sankt-Peterburg, ulitsa Lenina, dom 12, kvartira 45. The words ulitsa, dom, and kvartira mean street, building, and apartment respectively. When you write the address for us in English, just include all four pieces of information in that order and we will handle the transliteration. What trips up American senders most often is the building system. Many Russian residential buildings have a main building number and then a secondary corpus or stroenie number, which is a separate wing or section of the same complex. If your recipient gives you an address with a slash in it, like 12/3, that second number matters — leaving it out can send our courier to the wrong entrance entirely. Apartment buildings in Russia also typically have an entrance number called a podyezd, and for large Soviet-era buildings with six or eight entrances this is critical. Ask your recipient for the full address including podyezd and floor number if they live in an apartment building. For private houses, confirm whether there is a gate code or an intercom. Office deliveries need the company name, floor, and a contact phone number because reception desks in Russian office buildings do not always accept packages for unnamed recipients.

Payment from a US Card: What Works and What Does Not

Paying for flowers in Russia from an American bank account has become more complicated since 2022, and we want to be honest about this rather than let you find out at checkout. Standard Visa and Mastercard transactions issued by American banks do not process on Russian payment terminals. This is not a problem with your card being declined for insufficient funds — it is a network-level restriction that neither you nor we can override at the point of sale. What does work: PayPal transfers to our business account, wire transfers in US dollars to our company account, and cryptocurrency payments including USDT and Bitcoin. Some customers use Wise to send a ruble-equivalent transfer, which also processes cleanly. When you contact us to place an order, tell us upfront that you are paying from the United States and we will send you the payment instructions that actually work for your situation rather than a checkout link that will fail. We confirm the order only after payment clears, so factor in a few hours for bank processing if you are using a wire. PayPal and crypto confirm faster, usually within thirty minutes. Do not try to use a Russian relative's card on your behalf unless they are the one placing the order — it creates confusion about who receives the order confirmation and who we contact if there is a delivery question. We always send a delivery confirmation photo to the email on the order, so make sure that email is yours.

Which Flowers Actually Survive the Russian Winter and Summer

Russia has extreme seasonal temperatures that directly affect which flowers we can guarantee in good condition. In January and February in Saint Petersburg, outdoor temperatures regularly drop to minus fifteen Celsius or colder. We wrap cold-sensitive flowers in thermal packaging and our couriers move quickly, but there are varieties we simply will not send in deep winter because they will not survive even a ten-minute walk from a warm car to a building entrance. Tropical flowers — anthuriums, birds of paradise, ginger flowers — are off the table from November through March for outdoor deliveries. In summer the opposite problem appears: July and August in Moscow can reach thirty-five Celsius, and flowers like lily of the valley, sweet peas, and ranunculus have very short vase life in that heat. Year-round reliable varieties for Russia include roses, which we source in standard sizes from forty to seventy centimeters, spray roses, chrysanthemums, alstroemeria, and carnations. Tulips are excellent from January through April when Dutch imports are at their peak quality. Peonies are available and spectacular from late May through July. Hydrangeas hold well in moderate temperatures, so spring and autumn are their best seasons here. Orchid plants rather than cut orchids are a good choice for winter because the pot insulates the roots. If you are ordering for a specific occasion and have a flower in mind, ask us whether that variety is in good supply that week — availability shifts with what is coming through from growers.

What to Write on the Card: Language and Customs

Most recipients in Russia read Cyrillic, and while younger people in major cities generally read English, a card written entirely in English can feel slightly impersonal to an older recipient. We can transliterate your message into Russian if you write it in simple English and ask us to translate it — this is a free service and takes us a few minutes. Keep the message under sixty words because our card format has a size limit, and very long messages get cut off in a way that sometimes looks odd. Russian flower-giving customs differ from American ones in a few ways worth knowing. Odd numbers of flowers are traditional for living recipients — a bouquet of eleven roses or seven tulips is the norm, while even numbers are associated with mourning occasions. We always count this correctly on our end, but if you specify a quantity, make sure it is odd. Name days, called imeniny in Russian, are celebrated separately from birthdays and are taken seriously in many families, especially older ones. If you know your recipient's name day is coming up, mention it — we can note it on the card. Russians also celebrate the eighth of March, International Women's Day, as a major flower holiday on par with Valentine's Day in the United States. Demand is extremely high that week, prices rise, and you should order at least three days in advance. The same applies to the twenty-third of February, which is Men's Day, though flowers for men are less traditional and a plant or a mixed arrangement works better.

How to Check Your Order Is on Track from Across the Ocean

Once you have placed and paid for the order, you want confirmation that something is actually happening on the Russian side — especially when you are twelve time zones away and cannot call to check. Here is how our process works. You receive an email confirmation when the order is accepted and payment is verified. Our florist assembles the bouquet on the day of delivery, not days in advance, because we work with fresh-cut stems that arrive from our suppliers that morning. The courier picks up the bouquet and delivers it within the window you specified, typically one to two hours from the time the order enters the delivery queue. After delivery is completed, we send a photo of the bouquet at the recipient's door or in the recipient's hands if they consent to that, to the email address on your order. If the recipient is not home during the delivery window, our courier attempts to contact them by phone — this is why a working Russian mobile number for the recipient is not optional, it is essential. Without a local phone number we cannot reach the recipient if they are delayed, and the bouquet comes back. Russian mobile numbers start with +7 followed by ten digits. If your recipient has a number in a different format, double-check it with them before you submit the order. If there is any problem — a wrong address, a building that requires a code we were not given, a recipient who has moved — we contact you by email and wait for your reply before attempting again, so keep your inbox open on the day of delivery.

Sending flowers from the United States to Russia is genuinely doable, and we handle these orders regularly. The customers who have smooth experiences are the ones who sort out three things before they order: the exact delivery time they want stated in Russian local time, the complete address including apartment and entrance numbers, and a working Russian mobile number for the recipient. Everything else — the flower selection, the card message, the payment method — we can work through together. The distance between you and the person you are sending flowers to is real, but it does not have to make the gesture feel uncertain. Доставим букет по России за 1–2 часа.