Wedding Flowers — How Much?!

Today I’m shar­ing a very hon­est and detailed break­down and expla­na­tion of the price you can expect to pay for your wed­ding flow­ers. Bernadette Chap­man from Dream Occa­sions is here to tell you more. Read, digest, com­ment if you’d like to, even ask us a ques­tion. I hope you’ll find this advice fea­ture use­ful! Over to Bernadette…

Part of my role as a wed­ding plan­ner is to allo­cate clients’ bud­gets to the rel­e­vant areas of their wed­ding, i.e from our ini­tial con­sul­ta­tion I will have an idea of how much the flow­ers, enter­tain­ment, sta­tionery should cost. I’m nor­mally pretty accu­rate with my esti­ma­tions but then I have been doing this for 10 years!

Flow­ers by Jades Flower Design Photo credit Mark Bothwell

At times how­ever it can be con­fus­ing for clients to under­stand why a cer­tain sup­plier is charg­ing x, y, z. They see the prod­uct, in this instance let’s say a bou­quet, but don’t think about what influ­ences the price. A bit later in this post I will explain this to you.

If you have viewed my gallery of past events you will notice flow­ers fea­ture quite heav­ily in my designs. This is because many of my events have a tra­di­tional coun­try gar­den feel and/or are in mar­quees thus we need to fill the *space.

*it is my opin­ion that if you want to make the most of your mar­quee you either have to ensure the flo­ral dis­plays are large enough to make a state­ment or you use other décor tricks like Chi­nese lanterns, bunting, rib­bon hang­ing from the frame­work or poles. I feel jugs and teacups of flow­ers on their own in a mar­quee just get lost.

Flow­ers by Euphoric Photo credit Mark Bothwell

If you want to cre­ate some­thing like this Autum­nal party  or bohemian wed­ding you need to ensure your bud­get reflects just what the flow­ers will cost. I’m not say­ing you have to spend thou­sands on flow­ers, but you do need to be real­is­tic. Not all wed­ding designs need a lot of flow­ers but if your dream is to fill your venue with peonies then you have to be real­is­tic — £500 is just not going to suffice.

“When the reces­sion hit at its hard­est a lot of the major grow­ers in Hol­land and other coun­tries were going out of busi­ness. Flower prices are deter­mined by the avail­abil­ity of each par­tic­u­lar flower – the more avail­able on the Dutch mar­ket the lower the price. There­fore if I order 300 stems of a par­tic­u­lar rose and there are only that many on the mar­ket that day the price will be much higher than if there are 10,000 on the mar­ket. When the grow­ers went out of busi­ness there became a lack of cer­tain flow­ers in the mar­ket which made the prices soar. The mar­ket has recov­ered slightly but the cost is still so much higher than it was.” Bev­er­ley, Jades Flower Design

Flow­ers by Euphoric Photo credit Mark Bothwell

Flow­ers by Euphoric Photo credit Mark Bothwell

“Most of our prospec­tive clients now come to us with a fairly good idea of what they want in terms of flow­ers, but not always what they cost. It is rare to have a bride who has absolutely no idea of what she wants. Our brides are inter­net savvy, they use social media, they bring THEIR Pin­ter­est boards to US! They also read the wed­ding blogs and the bridal mag­a­zines which are chock full of gor­geous Amer­i­can wed­dings which have been pho­tographed in Cal­i­forn­ian vine­yards or New Eng­land gar­dens. The pho­tographs are always stuffed full of flow­ers!! The mag­a­zine and blog sug­gested prices are usu­ally wrong!!”
Simon & Vic­to­ria, Euphoric Flow­ers

One of my pet hates is pho­to­shoots filled to the brim with flow­ers on a table. Yes it looks won­der­ful but brides and grooms should mul­ti­ply that design by the num­ber of tables you will have, being extrav­a­gant on one table is all well and good but what about when there are 11, 13 or even 20 tables to do?

With the type of wed­dings I design I find brides want beau­ti­ful peonies, hydrangeas and gar­den style roses (a fact attested by Euphoric) but they come at a pre­mium price. Like­wise some brides want the “wild­flower’ look, that’s great, but that’s a lot of flow­ers and cre­at­ing that “I’ve just picked this” look isn’t cheap.

I’ve had many dis­cus­sions with my florists recently who all tell me that mak­ing a profit is get­ting harder. They are unable to charge more for their ser­vices due to the eco­nomic cli­mate but at the same time whole­sale flower prices have soared. So what is a real­is­tic bud­get for wed­ding flowers?

Let’s look at some scenarios ………..

A Cen­tral Lon­don venue for the cer­e­mony and recep­tion with a total of 80 guests (as quoted by Euphoric Flowers)

Bridal Bou­quet – hand tied bou­quet £75.00
Brides­maids x 3 – hand tied bou­quets at £35.00 each – £105.00
But­ton­holes x 6 at £6.00 each – £36.00
Cor­sages x 2 at £15.00 each – £30.00
Cer­e­mony Flow­ers – 2 large vase arrange­ments – £100.00 each – £200.00
Registrar’s Table – 1 small arrange­ment – £40.00
Recep­tion Flow­ers – 8 tables at £60.00 each – £480.00
Cake Flow­ers – £30.00
Total -£996.00
VAT -£199.20
Deliv­ery, instal­la­tion and clear­ance £100.00
Grand Total – £1,295.20

Now let’s com­pare this to a flower quo­ta­tion from one of my ear­lier wed­dings in 2005 (Jades Flowers)

Bridal Flow­ers
Bride’s Bou­quet (based on pha­lanop­sis bou­quet) £ 80.00
Bridesmaid’s Bou­quet (to match) 30.00
6 Orchid But­ton­holes @ £3.00 each 18.00
3 Orchid Cor­sages @ £10.00 each 30.00

Cer­e­mony Flow­ers
1 Can­de­labra Arrange­ment 120.00
Fire­place Arrange­ment 50.00
Arrange­ment for Registrar’s Table 45.00
Ivy for Gallery 80.00

Recep­tion Flow­ers
The Din­ing Hall
8 Table Arrange­ments @ £70.00 each 560.00

The Par­lour
7 Table Arrange­ments @ £70.00 each 490.00
Fire­place Arrange­ment 50.00

Grand Total – £ 1,553.00

It’s amaz­ing to see how ‘lit­tle’ prices have increased over 8 years despite the fact florists’ labor & flower costs have increased.

“There are always going to be fac­tors that influ­ence what florists charge. Cer­tain flow­ers are always more expen­sive, more elab­o­rate designs are more labor inten­sive and there are always the addi­tional costs such as hire items, trans­port, petrol (a killer), wages and most impor­tantly our time. We can spend many months prepar­ing for a wed­ding. Months of site vis­its, design meet­ings, quotes, re-quotes and mock ups of final designs. But it doesn’t end there, our work doesn’t fin­ish when we deliver the bridal bou­quet. If we are lucky, we will be allowed to clear a job on a Mon­day morn­ing, if not it can be a mid­night or early Sun­day morn­ing call fol­lowed by return­ing all the hire items that are fre­quently requested.” Simon & Vic­to­ria, Euphoric Flow­ers

It’s not just the flowers……

When it comes to charg­ing you the client for the flow­ers, it’s not a sim­ple mat­ter of a rose costs £2 so they will charge £2.50. There are many other fac­tors to con­sider to ensure the busi­ness costs are met:

• Gen­eral run­ning costs like mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als, tele­phone line, rent, util­i­ties, vehi­cles etc
• Wages inc. free­lance staff for larger wed­dings (circa £15 ph)
• Their TIME! You’re pay­ing for their pro­fes­sion­al­ism in cre­at­ing the right bou­quet or table design + the time it takes to set it all up, it’s not unusual for my florists to be on site all day on the Fri­day + part of the wed­ding day itself, mul­ti­ply that by the num­ber of staff the florist has…………and you can almost see the profit diminish
• Col­lec­tion of the vases, con­tain­ers, removal of flow­ers not wanted on the Sun­day or Mon­day after the wedding
• 1–3 meet­ings per client to ensure the wed­ding design is perfect
• Con­sul­ta­tions with those clients that don’t book
• Numer­ous phone calls and emails with poten­tial clients
• Then of course in the world of social media it’s not enough for a florist to attend open days at local venues. They have to blog – tweet – face­book and pin their ideas for poten­tial clients to see!

“I have noticed sev­eral brides com­ing to me lately very close to the date of their wed­ding because their florist has gone out of busi­ness and this is due to the fact that these florists are not charg­ing cor­rectly and can­not main­tain their busi­ness on such low costs. Good florists are not expen­sive, they are just real­is­tic and pro­vide top qual­ity flow­ers and ser­vice.” Bev­er­ley, Jades Flower Design

Break the flower bud­get down

Some­times when you say a fig­ure that you are allo­cat­ing to flow­ers it can seem high, can seem plenty, until you start break­ing it down. ‘Remem­ber when work­ing out your bud­get to ensure you have enough for:

Bridal Flow­ers
Bridal Bou­quet
Bridesmaids/flowergirl bou­quets
But­ton­holes & corsages

Cer­e­mony
Registrar/altar flow­ers
Entrance flow­ers (i.e bay trees, urns, pedestals)
Pew ends

Recep­tion
Entrance flow­ers (i.e bay trees, urns, pedestals)
Top Table
Guest tables
Fea­ture flow­ers (fire­places, beams, poles)

Misc
Occa­sional tables in court­yards or lounge areas
Thank you flowers

And finally…

Not every wed­ding has to be filled with flow­ers. It depends on the design you have cho­sen and as men­tioned ear­lier you can com­ple­ment flow­ers by using can­dles, bunting, lanterns and pom poms to add color in DIY ways – i.e you’ll need to buy or hire the items but then allo­cate some of your time to imple­ment the design the day before the wedding.

Also, if you have cho­sen a venue that is stun­ning before you even start with flow­ers, then it’s best to choose sim­ple dis­plays to com­ple­ment the room, not fight against it.

Huge thanks to Bernadette for shar­ing her advice with us all — do let me know if you’ve found it use­ful! Bernadette is from Dream Occa­sions Wed­ding & Event Coor­di­na­tion and also a founder mem­ber of the UK Alliance of Wed­ding Plan­ners.

Thanks also to:

• Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Mark Both­well for all of the images used above
• Bev­er­ley of Jades Flower Design
• Simon & Vic­to­ria from Euphoric Flow­ers