What is the average cost of flowers for a wedding in 2025?
Hey everyone, this is Kathryn, your Iowa wedding florist, who is excited to help you today with this burning question.
Often, I get asked this question out of pure curiosity but I really want to go into depth today about how layered this question is.
So for those of you that really care about the numbers and don’t want to learn more, let me just tell you, on average, we see most couples spending anywhere from 2500 to 5000 dollars on their wedding florals.
Now this might look different in different states. We are located in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and mostly serve Iowa weddings. If you are currently in California, or even somewhere on East Coast, of course, the pricing is going to look wildly different. So please be reaching out to those particular area floors. I’m sure they would love to help you. But here in the Iowa, our pricing looks a little bit different. And let me tell you why.
First and foremost, we do not have a wholesaler nearby. This might come as a shock, but our nearest wholesaler from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is about an hour and a half away. And they statistically are not that great to work with. So the wholesalers you want to align yourself with are more than four hours away in some of the major cities around the Midwest. Why should this big be a big deal to you? Well, let me tell you. Florists in Iowa have to have a lot more backups because of flowers coming poorly. You have to either reorder them for them to be shipped in the following day, or in the next couple of days. There’s a particular wholesaler that I tend to use who only delivers on Tuesday mornings and Friday mornings. So if your flowers come in poorly on Tuesday, you have to wait until Friday in order to get a substitute. Now, that doesn’t happen all of the time, and most seasoned florists have backups on backups and a quality wholesale rep, but it is something to consider. And local flowers, I think some people have a misconception that local flowers are cheaper. Flower farmers deserve the exact same wage, if not higher, than a wholesaler does. Now, I believe the flower quality is better. The vase life is longer, and overall, it contributes to the local economies. I’m all about using local flowers but they’re not necessarily cheaper.
The second thing to think about when it comes to how expensive your wedding flowers are has to do with how luxurious you want your wedding flowers. If you are willing to accept whatever looks the best, then your local florist will probably be able to provide you with the overall feel of what you’re hoping for, but at a lesser price. If you are wanting the most high end exotic hard to get flowers out there, and you will probably expect to have to pay more. And I know some of you might be thinking, this is common sense, but there are some people who really don’t know anything about flowers. And so it’s our job to educate them and this. is what this blog post is about, right?
One other thing to think about is. how full you want your arrangements to be? There are a lot of Pinterest photos, and I’ve honestly seen it as a new trend where we are using minimal greenery. Now, greenery can be expensive. I’m not trying to say that it’s cheap by any means but greenery does fill up space better than focal flowers do. Focal flowers tend to be a little bit more expensive. And if we’re not having any greenery to cover up all the gaps our arrangements, full arrangements tend to be more expensive. For example, a full wedding arch with just greenery and filler flowers can cost anywhere from 1100 to 1500 dollars. But if you’re wanting a full floral arch, no greenery, we’re looking at 2000 to $3000.
So let’s run through some mock ideas for those who want to just talk about numbers. If you’re. budget is $2000 you can probably purchase a bridal bouquet, 5 bridesmaids bouquets, six boutonnieres, two corsages, a corner arch piece and some caked flowers safely. Four for $2000 you could purchase a bridal bouquet, a boutonniere and a full floral arch. Another. option would be a bridal bouquet. 10 bridesmaids bouquets, 15 bouton years and 10 corsage. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of ways to mix and match these ideas.
For $3000 we could get one bridal bouquet, 5 bridesmaids’ bouquets, 6 boutonnieres, 2 corsages, a flower petals, a corner arch piece and fifteen tables of loose greenery. Another option for $3000 could be one bridal bouquet, three bridesmaids bouquets 7 boutonniere, four corsages and 15 tables of bud vases.
$4000 to 5000 dollars typically covers almost everything that you could consider in a minimal floral designs. For example, this could be one bridal bouquet, 5 bridesmaids bouquets, 7 boutonnieres, 4 corsages, a corner arch piece, two statement pieces, ten tables of bud vases and ten tables of loose greenery. For those price point, you could also potentially get a bridal bouquet. Two bridesmaids bouquets, 10 boutonnieres, 5 corsages, 5 tables of compotes and 10 tables of bud vases. Another option might be one bridal bouquet, one boutonniere, one corner arch piece, five tables of tall centerpieces and ten tables of bud vases.
$5000 to $8000 is a pretty nice price point. If you’re looking to keep every table dressed up and even dressing up your ceremony location. An example of this might be the personal flowers (bridal bouquet, bridesmaids, bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages), a full arch or an aisle runner, 5 tables of elevated centerpieces or tall centerpieces, as I’ve referred to them and ten tables of bud vases.
And for anyone who just wants to have fun dreaming, if you had a budget of $10,000 to $15,000 you could get your bridal bouquet bridesmaids bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, a full arch, hanging ceiling flowers and tabled decor. Now I will not say that 10 to $15,000 covers everything. There are some weddings that are still more expensive than that. And that could range from a couple wanting duplicates of high, expensive items like double arches or a couple different things hanging from the ceiling. Or maybe this particular couple really wants super luxurious flowers in every single arrangement. So 15,000 is definitely not the cap. Some of the high end florists in Orange County start all of their weddings at 20,000 and it goes up from there. So I’m just trying to give you examples for what this could buy you, what this price point could buy you here in the Midwest.
If you’re wanting to learn more specifics about what I charge, I have a blog post going over some of the common floral needs and their average price points. So check that out here.
Let me know if you have any questions. And I look forward to answering them.
