my two cents
well as far as i know shades of red, and orange need a couple of hours to "mature" if you add enough red or orange food coloring to something the color should become stronger, however the thining that was aformentioned can become problematic but that can be solved with a little...
well you could make the flowers out of gumpaste and then hang them up side down from the wire to allow them to dry, and seeing that gumpaste dries faster and harder than fondant it shold solve your time problem as well as the saging /"falling flat" problem, now the only problem is do you have...