Wedding Flowers 101, Part 3: How much do wedding flowers cost?
If this question has been weighing on your brain, friend, let’s dive in!
It’s not a great feeling to want beautiful fresh flowers for your wedding and then hit a wall of confusion once it comes down to budgeting.
You might have questions like…
How do I know what a good price for a bridal bouquet is?
How much does a ceremony arch cost?
Why are wedding flowers so much more expensive than grocery store bouquets?
Unfortunately, your online search for those answers may yield a pretty far range. And it’s going to start feeling like everyone is keeping a secret that even the interwebs refuses to reveal. Which is frustrating!
Photograph by Sam Bond Photography
I don’t believe there should be any secrets about wedding flowers, especially when it comes to making an informed purchase. That doesn’t do any favors for anyone. And it’s not that I can confirm there is secret-keeping going on, but I do know for sure that having a resource where something brand new is put plainly and simply is always helpful.
Here’s how it works:
Both domestic flowers (USA grown) and imported ones are sold to florists, grocery stores, and designers at wholesale cost, with each maintaining a ‘cold chain’ to keep those blooms fresh and beautiful.
And that is where the similarities stop.
Each flower seller utilizes fresh blooms for different purposes to serve different customers. For wedding floral designs, those stems are going to begin their journey into becoming the breathtaking flowers for your dream wedding.
Each of your wedding flowers will have an optimum moment of peak beauty, usually when it is fully opened. The stems are expertly conditioned for a lasting display and opened to the perfect stage, arranged into a practiced and breathtaking design, temporarily stored in cold storage once again, and delivered to the venue with care with maybe some extra stability supports. They are set up or installed if they need to be, transported from ceremony to reception if needed, and finally taken down and potentially composted and vessels cleaned.
Photograph by Sam Bond Photography
And a wedding florist provides much more than simply handmade beautiful designs full of lovely flowers.
Your florist will bring their experience and expertise to the table to take any vision of wedding flowers and elevate it: they both optimize and maximize. That know-how will be able to get you the most bang for your buck.
If your florist is a farmer-florist (Hi! That’s me!), or someone similar who values locally-grown flowers, you’re in for even more of a treat. They’ll know how to source the very best flowers during every season to create designs on a whole other level of loveliness. Locally-grown flowers offer shapes, movement, colors, and textures that are unrivaled because of their low tolerance for shipping.
You’ll get the crème-de-la-crème of beautiful flowers for your wedding, regardless of whether you’re opting for A La Carte designs or Full-Service florals.
Photograph by Sara Cassidy Photography
So, if you’re opting for stunning, fresh wedding flowers to make your wedding day unforgettable, purchasing designs from a professional should definitely not cost the same as grocery store flowers. If they do, that’s a red flag, friend. It’s worth it to invest in wedding flowers from your florist and trust the experts you can spend the best day of your life enjoying the best flowers of your life.
Want to learn how to achieve fairytale-level wedding florals with any size budget?
Check out the blog post Wedding Flowers on a Budget to see all the smart strategies and decisions you can utilize to get uh-mazing fresh flowers for the dreamiest day, no matter if your flower budget is $150 or $15,000.
Also, check out our Pinterest for real inspiration with transparent pricing that shows how to play to every budget’s strengths.
Want to skip the inspo and see how far your budget can go?
Visit my interactive Wedding Flowers Calculator page:
Wishing your floral dreams come true,
Sara
