Wedding Wednesday
Why are wedding flowers so expensive you ask?
It seems like such a cliche question, but really, why are wedding flowers so expensive? I’m sure a lot of brides are shocked to find out that their $1500 allotted floral budget isn’t going to cover the wedding of their dreams… and there’s good reason why. I’ve broken down a few points of interest maybe you didn’t know about the tedious world of flowers to share just why flowers are so pricey:
Prep Work: Most likely you’ve worked with us to see the vision and inspiration of your big day.. picking out colors, what designs will look like, a Pinterst board of inspiration, but behind the scenes we are noting many other details that make all the difference in a wedding planned perfectly. Behind the scenes, we are choosing specific flowers we see suitable for your designs, specific rose varieties, we are sourcing containers from various resources, making sure they aren’t on back order, and that we can get enough to meet your needs. This is all more than a month out. At the month of mark, we are getting final counts in, fine-tuning our floral recipes (recipes we create for each design so that we order enough products, and so that we have a plan of attack on the week of when we have countless arrangements to make), placing orders with vendors, ordering all of the supplies we need to create each of these items.
Production Work: On a typical week, our flowers arrive on a Tuesday, and this is where the start of the production week begins. Each bunch is accounted for, each stem, cleaned of foliage, and each bunch is freshly cut and dipped into re-hydrating solution. Foliage is important to be removed below the waterline, as this will contaminate the water, and be grounds for bacterial growth which clog the stems. Most flowers are transported out of water from other countries so re-hydrating is a very important measure in keeping these perishable products at their full liveliness. This is common practice. Buckets are freshly bleached weekly to prevent bacterial growth as well and ensure this process is as cleanly as possible. Flowers such as roses may be stripped completely of thorns and foliage depending on their use. Then, flowers are either kept out of the cooler where we monitor their bloom, or placed directly into our coolers to keep flowers tight and ready for the design week ahead.
Floral designs are hand-crafted art. There are countless hours that go into the placement and design of each arrangement and/or floral piece. Flowers are further processed or prepped to be created into bouquets, centerpieces, or personal flowers. Each stem is given a fresh cut, carefully designed and placed into an arrangement ensuring the composition and artwork is reflective of the clients’ overall look, and then is misted, checked for ample water, and is carefully placed into our coolers. It takes hours upon hours to create every design, from bouquets to each hand-created boutonniere, corsage, centerpiece, aisle flower and detail. You can ensure every flower had thought and purpose as it was being incorporated into each design. Vases are cleaned & packaged, and votives are prepped with candles. A toolkit is prepared with anything imaginable we might need while on delivery.
Delivery & Transport: When it comes time to transport and deliver flowers, each design is packaged, misted and placed into our air-conditioned transportation to arrive to the wedding venue. Extra time is allotted to ensure arrival with no challenges. Flowers are unloaded and placed in the coolest spot, and then on-site set-up begins where we place each arrangement, ensure everything is just as outlined in our paperwork, and add any other touches to the look.
Keeping on Our Toes: I’m going to let you in on a little secret… Nothing ever goes as planned. No matter how much time and energy we spend on making sure everything goes just as we’d like, something keeps us on our toes every week. Maybe the roses we ordered in aren’t as big of heads as we’d like, or a crop comes in looking not as great as usual, we have to improvise and adjust almost every week due to the changing product we work with. Sometimes this means spending a little more than we budgeted on our end to ensure our product meets our high standards. We’ve learned to be flexible with this process, as there may be something unplanned that comes up and needs quick and immediate action to ensure our end-product is to our standards.
This doesn’t all get done alone. It takes a team to create a wedding… from the prep work, to the designs and all of the details, to the delivery, we have an entire team working on your wedding to make all of this come to fruition. I guess what I’m trying to get at is that this all costs money in the form of labor to create and get these products delivered.
So, you ask, why are flowers so expensive? What it comes down to is that we aren’t just providing a service of selling ideas and a product. We are literally creating, designing and producing a look from initial ideas to actual creation. Each experience is customized to each client. Each week it starts again.
