With wedding planning season in full swing, I thought I would use today’s post to address the ins and outs of wedding flowers and what a typical bride should anticipate spending on her wedding flowers.
Timeline – If you are familiar with a particular florist’s work and wish to book them for your event, you should contact them no later than 9 months prior to your event, 12 months if you really want to play it safe.
Again, if it is important that you retain a particular florist’s services, offer to pay a retainer fee and sign an agreement that guarantees your date.
By 6 months out, you should have a generalized plan that details flower types, design styles, and tentative delivery details.
By 3 months out, you should meet to finalize details, review the design plan and confirm that you still like it and agree with how your florist will execute it. If you are paying to have samples created, this would be the time to view them.
By 1 month out, you should be paying final monies owed, finalizing table counts, and providing the florist with any special items that you wish to have incorporated in the bouquets.
Pricing – In general, you can expect to allocate between 12 and 15 percent of your overall budget for floral and décor elements. Factors that affect flower budgets include size of your bridal party, guest list (i.e. total number of tablecenters needed), geographical location (large metropolises are notoriously more expensive than smaller, more rural areas), and types of flowers you wish to use.
Bouquets – bouquets typically run between $95 and $500 depending on size and flowers. A gerbera daisy bouquet measuring 8” in diameter will likely run $95, whereas a 9.5” in diameter bouquet crafted of calla lilies, orchids, roses, and hydrangea will run somewhere between $250 and $350. Looking for something really amazing and exotic? Say, a cascade bouquet constructed entirely of phalaeonopsis orchids, or maybe you love ladyslipper orchids and want those in your bouquet. Girls, these flowers are delicate, and more difficult to come by. You can expect to pay somewhere between $250 and $500 for a bouquet like that.
Boutonnieres - One of the least expensive elements, you can expect to pay between $12 and $25 per piece.
Table Centers – Table centers com in so many shapes and sizes, their price points vary widely. In general, you can expect to pay between $75 for a simple design to upwards of $500 for more elaborate and over-the-top designs. If you are looking for an under glass design with a floating candle and some flowers, expect to pay somewhere around $25 per vase (for a three vase design, you are looking at around $75 per table). For a simple julep cup full of roses, you are likely going to pay between $75 and $95 for a typical design. Wanting a tall flower design on a shapely vase, these designs start at around $195 and go up from there.
Chuppahs, Trellises, and Arbors – Unless you want to buy the structure to put in your yard or pass down to siblings for use, you should anticipate renting a structure and paying to have it delivered to your ceremony site, setup, and disassembled by the company you rent it from. Depending on the complexity of the design, you can expect to pay between $300 and $1500 to rent this type of structure.
In addition to renting the structure, don’t forget about renting fabric and paying to have it decorated with floral elements. When renting fabric, plan on spending $5 per yard of fabric needed (plan on renting 36 yards of decorator width fabric, or $180 worth of fabric, plus $100 in labor to install it).
Floral elements will run between $300 and $3000, depending on how densely you want the structure to be adorned with florals. Oftentimes, brides choose a thick/lush base of greenery accented with more minimalistic floral elements, thus costing significantly less than encrusting the structure with roses.
Floral Varietals, and Seasonal Availability – These factors greatly affect pricing. I have created a flower matrix that addresses availability and retail pricing per stem. To access the matrix, click here OR Click here for more planning tools
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