What is a realistic wedding flower budget?
Ah, the million dollar question! (not literally!) This is probably the most googled question when it comes to wedding flowers and annoyingly, there’s no clearcut answer, but hopefully the following blog post should help to demystify or shed some light on the reasoning behind wedding floristry pricing…
You might see content out there saying your flowers should make up a certain percentage of your wedding budget, and I’m sure if you looked at it theoretically there’s some truth to it, but ultimately your wedding flower budget is so hard to gauge because it isn’t necessarily indicative of metrics like the number of guests you have, like your catering might be. Some helpful factors to consider that can influence the cost of your wedding flowers include:
Size of your bridal party:
We love a big bridal party but those bridesmaid bouquets come with a price tag! Depending on style and ingredients, we price our Bridesmaid Bouquets somewhere between £50-£80, which alone doesn’t seem like much, but if you’ve got 6 Bridesmaids that’s somewhere in the region of £360, give or take.
We’re not saying don’t have a big bridal party, but consider the priorities for your floral budget, with maybe personal florals being higher on the list. There’s also ways we can repurpose those bouquets, in the simplest way leaving vases strategically around your venue for them to be on display throughout the reception (and keeping them watered and fresh!)
Specifying floral varieties out of season:
We love the sentimentality flowers can have, especially on your wedding day, but unfortunately not all floral varieties are available all year round and this has 2 implications: firstly, some flowers just can’t be sourced at certain times but if they can, they’ll come with a hefty price tag per stem. Trusting your florist to choose seasonal blooms that fit your brief will help avoid that price creeping up.
Choosing a floral heavy style:
We love more modern styles of floristry, with asymmetrical, floral heavy designs but in the simplest sense, floral stems cost much more than foliage stems, often up to 10x more. For this reason alone when pricing an arrangement in this style it comes with a price tag to match.
Using a local florist:
Like most wedding suppliers travelling to your venue on the day of your wedding, florists will add mileage to your proposal, a van jam packed with carefully packaged blooms unfortunately doesn’t fuel itself. Everyone has a slightly different way of doing it, but ultimately the further your florist is from the venue, the higher the mileage fee. This shouldn’t be a significant amount of your floral budget at all, but worth considering if you’re looking at ways to maximise your budget on flowers.
Repurposing Arrangements:
At fern + birch we are such big advocates for making the most of your floral budget by repurposing arrangements between ceremony and reception. This ensures you can have maximum floral impact throughout the day! We work with all our couples to choose arrangements that can easily be moved and repositioned, regardless of whether your ceremony and reception are the same location, we’ll be running around in the background making sure all your arrangements are there for the moments that matter through the day. This might look something like large urn arrangements framing your ceremony, then later framing your top table, or pew ends becoming bud vases on guest tables for the wedding breakfast. Why pay for something twice?!
So, the real crux of it, I still haven’t given a price…
Most of our couples spend in the region of £1000 to £2500 and beyond, which can feel like quite a range (see our next blog post for a breakdown of what different budgets might get you) but here’s the key thing I want you to takeaway:
We can work with any floristry budget and don’t be afraid to tell us where your monetary limits lie, the above topics are just some of the ways we can compromise and make your budget and vision come to life. Many people think adding ‘wedding’ makes everything more expensive but I promise you we’re not here to fleece you on your big day, we’re always happy to have open and transparent conversations about pricing.
