Wedding Flower Budgets Without the Mystery

Flower pricing has a reputation for being murky, and I understand why. A quote arrives with a number at the bottom and very little in the middle. You nod, panic and say, "Can we do something smaller?"

At Ribbon, we write every quote line by line, and I'd like to show you how that works. You're free to take this to any florist and ask the same questions.

Where the money actually goes

Three things sit inside every wedding flower quote.

• The flowers themselves. Stems, greenery and sundries. We work with eight regional growers, so this part reflects what's in season and what it cost the grower to bring it to us.

• The labour. Designing, conditioning, building, delivering, setting up and clearing down. Flowers are perishable and fragile, and almost all of the cost of a fine arrangement is hours of skilled hands.

• The mechanics. Vases, stands, frames, arch structures, vehicles. Some we own and some we hire. We never use floral foam, which means we build with chicken wire and moss, and it takes longer.

Take any one of these away and the bouquet doesn't exist.

What it tends to look like

Our smallest ceremony package, a bouquet, two boutonnieres and a little ceremony arrangement, starts at nine hundred dollars. A full-day wedding with ceremony, tables and an arch commonly lands several times that. These figures are for our studio only, and they'd be different elsewhere. The point is the shape: personal flowers are a small share of the total, and tables and structures are most of it.

Three honest ways to save

Choose the season. A wedding in the heart of a growing season uses flowers at their cheapest and best. At a florist who will say yes to out-of-season requests, that means flying stems in, and the bill reflects it.

Repeat your flowers. Ceremony arrangements can move to the reception. We plan for it. Two arrangements working twice are better than four doing one job.

Shrink the size, not the care. Fewer, larger, simpler arrangements are cheaper than many tiny ones, and they photograph better. Ten jars of one flower down a table looks intentional. Thirty different little vases looks frantic.

What not to cut

Don't cut the delivery and setup. A florist who rushes your flowers into a hot room at noon is a recipe for tired petals by the ceremony. And don't cut the bouquet to nothing; it's the one arrangement you'll hold in every photograph.

Ask for the full picture

When you receive any quote, ask for the line items. Ask what's hired and what's bought. Ask whether delivery is included. A good florist wants you to understand the invoice, and it's a fair sign of how they'll treat you on the day.

If you're ready to choose a structure, read on to building a ceremony arch that doesn't look like scaffolding, or see how a finished day came together in the flowers archive.