The Flower Budget
Winter is a big season for design inquiries. Everyone is motivated at the beginning of the new year to make some decisions that felt overwhelming or secondary in the thick of the holiday season. So while this is all fresh on my mind, and knowing that this is just one person’s opinion (based on lots of experience), I thought I’d share a few thoughts about the planning process and florals.
Let’s devote one whole post to the elephant in every room:
BUDGET
I can almost guarantee you’re getting different advice about your budget from every single source you research. Wedding websites will tell you it’s a certain percentage of your overall budget, your friends who got married will tell you what they spent, there are a couple of instagram and tiktok accounts seemingly dedicated to proving that all professional floral designers are a waste of the very breath they inhale because UserBride666 did her own flowers for $500 from a big box retailer. All of this is true and none of it is true, because none of it applies to you.
My biggest piece of advice around budget for wedding flowers is know how much YOU want to spend not some general idea of what everyone else spends on things. Having frank conversations about budget with prospective vendors, across the board, is expected, and even encouraged. Everyone you speak with is in business. It’s not a secret that we get paid for our work. It’s how we pay our own staff and mortgages and even go on vacation. But, it’s not a retail item, it’s a service that involves perishable product. That quotes sometimes vary widely is not evidence of fraud. It’s evidence of the myriad of factors that go in to pricing: location, season, experience, overhead, supply chain costs, etc.
bridal bouquets can range from $235 - $525 and attendant bouquets can range from $100 - $225
Full service florists (worth their salt) will charge at least 4x the cost of the wholesale flowers grown or purchase for your weddings. This is industry standard. For my own business, 1x is going to pay for the product, 2x is going to pay for the infrastructure/overhead/supplies to deal with that product - walk in cooler, design space, buckets, tables, utilities, transportation, licensing, insurance, vases, ribbons, snips, rubber bands, and 1x is paying me to actually work the product into the shape it’s in when it arrives at your wedding. There isn’t a ton of profit margin here. And contrary to every wedding advice column ever, it is not less expensive because I grow your flowers. The farm side of this business runs on that 1x of product cost.
free-standing split arches can range from $1200 - $4500 depending on the design and the flowers.
Remain flexible either in your requirements or your budget. For example, if you require specific blooms, there may be extra cost if that flower is out of season, out of region, or there is a crop issue. If you are less flexible about your budget, consider a centerpiece of non-perishable items rather than flowers or foliage. Something always has to give, so remain flexible somewhere. And let’s bust two myths while we’re here: collections of bud vases are not universally less expensive and neither is “just greenery.” Bud vases just reassign cost from product to labor, and greenery also must be grown and harvested and managed the same way a bloom is.
Your designer is there to solve problems. You want 15 centerpieces, but your budget for that is less than the estimate states? Let your designer take a crack at the solution. They may come up with something that is beautiful that you hadn’t considered. You don’t have to have all the answers. It’s very simply what you pay us to do.
a collection of bud vases, potted plants, and candles is roughly the same cost as a compote centerpiece
So to wrap up: what do you spend on flowers at your wedding? I don’t know. And anyone who is not you that says they do know is getting paid for the perception of authority. You know your budget better than anyone else. Everything else is just a conversation. Let me know when you’re ready to have one!
