Why Are Wedding Flowers Expensive?
When you first start planning your wedding it can be hard to know how much to budget for each part of the day. Then you start getting and idea of prices and some of the costs involved might come as a bit of a surprise.
Wedding flowers can be expensive, they are a fresh product with a short life span that has been grown from seed and nurtured before being cut, packed and transported. When I tell people what I do they often reply 'oh I would love to be able to play with flowers all the time' but the truth is there is so much more to it than that.
Working with me
Of course, when you book me to be your florist for your north east wedding there is a design and consultation process that we go through. For this I need to be both a flower expert and a wedding expert, I have many years of experience of both under my belt.
In the run up to your wedding I'll place multiple orders with different suppliers to make sure I have the best flowers on the market for your wedding day. These orders will arrive in the studio on different days so we can make sure flowers are at the right stage on the day and have opened up properly. There will probably also be a pre-dawn visit to the market in the days before the wedding to pick up any last little bits to make sure I choose what looks great that week.
Preparation
we have to prepare the flowers. We call this 'conditioning' but really it means trimming and cleaning the stems of each flower, feeding those that need it, and giving them a good drink for a day before we can start to arrange them. We also need somewhere to store everything with the right light and temperature conditions. We might need to help things open up or stop them from opening too quickly so we are constantly checking on the flowers to make sure they are on the right track.
Then comes the actual arranging. Yes this is the fun bit but it's also hard work. We work in the cold to keep the flowers fresh and it takes longer than you think to put together bouquets and centrepieces. A lot of it is intricate fiddly work too.
The wedding day
On the day of the wedding we have to carefully transport your flowers making sure they arrive in perfect condition and those arrangements that we can't do in advance have to be made onsite from scratch. This might mean we need to bring a team of staff with us. Then the next day when your cheeks are aching form smiling all day and you might have a slightly sore head we are back at the venue for pickup and possibly dismantling installations before going home to scrub vases and flower buckets ready to do it all again in a couple of days.
There are also all the boring costs of running and business day to day and I am fully insured. After all of that we do need to add a little bit on for a profit. I don't know any florists who are mega-rich but we do need to pay our bills.
If you'd like to chat about wedding flowers or venue styling for your wedding in the north east please get in touch on the Contact Me page.