Hello all! Wedding florist- Kathryn here!
Let’s chat about budgets shall we? Probably my number one question that I get has to do with costs of wedding flowers. Which I totally understand. Because when was the last time you probably bought flowers for someone else? Maybe it was just because bouquet or potentially prom corsages and boutonnieres back in high school. So. I’m here today to tell you about wedding flowers, how much they cost, what to look out for when you’re. Booking them so on and so forth.
Let’s just first talk about what goes into the wedding flowers before we talk about the cost of wedding flowers. Wedding florists are just like any other wedding vendor, there is quite a bit of work up front. They not only will have to start designing once that time comes, but they have to get together proposals write emails, book with couples and order flowers. Surprisingly enough, ordering flowers is probably one of the most extensive processes. When ordering flowers from a wholesaler or someone that’s local, flowers are perishable product and sometimes they perish, right? So you have to be really flexible and have almost five different backup plans. Then, we get to the actual important week, which is designing. It starts with receiving all of your flowers earlier in the week, spending all day processing them, organizing them, making sure everything came incorrectly. And then, of course, pivoting if something did not come in For example, we’ve had issues with flowers coming in the wrong shades. So if I ordered a pink flower and it came in like a hot pink instead of like a light blush, we would have to make adjustments either rush ordering certain flowers trying to swap them with something else or just not being able to use them entirely. Then after all the processing, we will spend all of our time designing; and those are pretty long days. Most florists spend anywhere from 12 to 16 hours, depending on how large of a wedding it is. Unfortunately, we can only do we can only design a couple days before the wedding. So our hours tend to be long, but that’s okay. And then the wedding day itself, we get to show up and design everything that we need to on site, place everything where they need to go and then head off. Now, sometimes we do have to return at the end of the night, which will require some sort of clean up and tear down. fee as well.
Okay, perfect. Now let’s actually talk about the costs. The reason I wanted to bring up all of the work that wedding florists do before designing, is because a lot of people assume the cost of flowers is really just the cost of the wholesale flowers. But in reality, it’s not only those costs, but also the cost of the florists’ time designing everything and then their time on your particular weddings. So that could include emailing, ordering flowers or even coming up with vision boards.
Great. Now we can talk about money. So when it comes to figuring out pricing of florals for weddings, Try to break things up into a couple of different categories to help you understand what things will cost. I like to break things up is to go between personals, ceremony and reception.
Let’s start with personals. Personals include your Bridal bouquet, bridesmaids bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, flower petals and anything else that might be used in your wedding party or immediate family. Now, a basic Google search for a bridal bouquet is probably where I would start. Most florists, including myself, do provide different ranges that you can look up for their pricing. So I’m going to link mine right here. My bridal bouquet normally is between $250 and $350 which does seem pretty accurate to a basic Google search online. So that’s our first point of contact when it comes to wedding flower costs. If your bridal bouquet costs around $300 which is just a healthy average, assume how big you want those bridesmaids bouquets. If you’re looking at photos on Pinterest, or maybe Instagram, you might notice that a lot of those bridesmaids bouquets are about half or a 3rd of the size. So then I would start to guesstimate. OK, so if our bridal bouquets $300 then half or a third would be roughly 100 to $150.
Then I would move on to boutonnieres and corsages. Most boutonnieres and corsages cost anywhere between $25 per individual item to $37 per individual item The boutonnieres would cost more on the $25 side in the corsages would cost more on the upper $35 sign. Therefore you can do the math on how many people you want to include in your wedding party or in your immediate family who will be receiving these personal flowers. My biggest piece of advice is if you are trying to save money, this might be the best place to conserve a little bit. I would recommend only offering a boutonniere for the groom and maybe the fathers, and then corsages for the mothers. If that is something you really deem as important. If you do not find it’s not important, that might be something you can skip on Another little note is if your family is a really insistent on everyone getting personal flowers. 1 way you can kind of split the difference is ask them to pay for any of the immediate family outside of the wedding party. That way. Hopefully everyone can be.
That was the bulk of us trying to figure out our personal flowers. Let’s move on to the ceremony/ The ceremony is pretty simple. Normally you will be getting married in front of some sort of altar or some sort of altar, tree, something that you have the option to decorate. My advice is, if your wedding is at church or a historical building that already has a beautiful backdrop, do not try to compete with it. You are going to need a ton of flowers in order to make that space look amazing, so you might as well not spend the money to put a bunch of flowers there. But on the other hand, if this backdrop is really dull and unexciting, then maybe renting an arch and putting some flowers on there would be. exactly what you mean. Arch flowers start around $300 and can go up from there. A full floral heavy arch can range anywhere from 1500 to 3 thousand dollars, depending on the types of flowers you’re wanting to use and the fullness of flowers that you’re wanting to use. I will be writing the blog post about that shortly, and I’ll have a link right here so you can talk about or learn about the different types of flowers and how the cost makes a difference. There are other little elements to your wedding that you could add here in your ceremony: floral statement pieces, aisle pieces, etc but for this generalized blog post, we are going to keep it pretty simple.
Moving on to the reception, the reception, depending on how many people you invite, is probably going to be the bulk of your spending on your wedding flowers. First and foremost, you’re going to want to figure out how many guests you plan on inviting/ showing up And then divide that number by either 8 or 10 to help you determine how many tables you’re going to need. Now, most of the time your venue will help you pick out a layout and give you better information of what size tables that they use. But in my experience, if you don’t know, stick with 8 and then you can always add or subtract as need be later. Centerpieces are some of the most widely ranged floral centerpieces that you can have. And the reason is they vary so much in size and shape. The smallest types of centerpieces, or maybe the most cost effective if we want to use that terminology would be some sort of combination of bud bases or loose greenery. Bud vases are great because you can still bring a floral component to your guest tables without adding the cost adding up. I normally sell my bud vases for around $10 per bud vase. while on the other hand, loose greenery is great because it just adds similarly to bud vases, a little bit of color, a little life to your tables. If you are choosing loose greenery, I would recommend seeing if you can find some sort of candle option or Maybe table markers with your pictures in there, something to help with the decor, because loose greenery is not a standalone synergies. Loose greenery does depend a little bit on price, but I would say average anywhere from $25 to $50 per table.
Another popular floral centerpiece would be the traditional floral compote. A compote is just the name of the base that the flowers go in. So it could be anywhere from a pretty gold metallic round vase to something a little bit more modern and clear. And these range quite a bit more in price just because you can have such different compost bearing and size and shape and design technique I would probably average on a compote costing $75 to $150 per table.
Last but not least, you can include some sort of statement piece. So we’ve already talked about more of a cost effective reception, guest table centerpiece, an average priced centerpiece, and now this would be the more elaborate, expensive, luxurious statement piece. A an option would be a “tall” or “elevated” centerpiece. So this is a centerpiece that is on a taller stand and it’s a little bit bigger by nature. Another option could be garland. Now garland could be either just greens or greenery plus flowers to really make a statement. But these two pieces, I would only recommend you using in 25 to 30% of your overall guest tables. That way they can really make that impact. And then you’re also not spending a fortune on every single table. Tall centerpieces can range anywhere from $300 to $500 depending on how luxuries of flowers you want to use and Garland just green Garland starts around $15 per foot, and then you can determine how many feet you want. And then the floral greenery garland starts anywhere from $25 per foot.
So now that we’ve explored the three main types of. floral categories you will be thinking about when you’re planning a wedding. The only other thing that you might have missed would be some sort of setup and delivery fee. Most florists will make this fee dependent on how much they have to do on site and how far they have to drive. So if you’re hoping for a less expensive overall cost, pick a florist that’s in the area and does not have to do too much the day of.
Okay, so we have all this information. We have a couple of data points. But Kathryn, how much do wedding flowers cost? Because I know there’s some one reading this, really wanting me to get into the meat and potatoes of averages when it comes to wedding flowers. Now, our data might look a little bit different than if you Googled this price online, because it will be showing you the average price throughout either the nation or certain areas. So make sure that you’re googling in the Midwest or in Iowa, or something that can help you. specify that budget range on average. Most of my couples spend anywhere from 2500 to 5500 on their wedding flowers This could include their personals, ceremony, reception sometimes is only includes their personals and ceremony , and they choose to DIY their reception flowers. I typically am pretty flexible with my couples because I recognize that weddings are expensive and at the end of the day, I want you to cherish the marriage, not just the giant party. So we have to, you know, be mindful of our costs. But every florist is a little different. I know there are some florists that will only do the entirety of the wedding and will not allow any DIY options. I know florists that have very strict minimums, which they cannot serve a small weddings. To be completely upfront our minimum is $2000. The reason we have decided to use minimums within our business is because we can only take on a couple weddings each weekend. We are very small company, which I love, but it requires us to really hone in on what we can do each weekend and not take on every single person that walks through our door.
For quick summary, when you are trying to figure out your wedding flowers, categorize your needs into the three main types that I chatted about between personals, ceremony and reception flowers. Then you can better understand how much things cost, where you’re spending the most and where you could potentially add.
Let me know if you have any questions and I would be happy to answer them!
