The price of wedding flowers

What are you paying for with your wedding flowers?

There is so much more to wedding flowers than simply creating the arrangements. Here is what goes in to wedding flowers and where your money is going.

Design & consultation

Designing wedding flowers takes time, skill and a vast amount of knowledge.

Your floral design team have great experience in.....

• Knowing what flowers are in season and coming up with the best alternatives depending on the time of year (for example if you love peonies, but aren't getting married in peony season)
• The mix and balance of focal flowers, filler flowers and foliage to create the look you would like
• Estimating the quantities needed for each arrangement
• Estimating what the price is likely to be when you want to get married (flowers are sold at auction and there is never a guarantee that something will be available or what price it will be - it also depends on weather, supply, demand and other economic factors) 
• Knowing what quantities flowers are sold in and factoring that in - for example, Anemones and Ranunculas are often sold in batches of 50 stems, so if we only need 20 for your wedding we need to work around that
• Understanding the construction of arrangements, the time it will take and the non-floral ingredients and costs (eg. wire, vases, tape, installation, delivery etc)

Read about our approach to wedding flower design.

Logistics

• Planning and assembling the right team with the right skills to create and deliver your arrangements
  
• Calculating the total quantities of flowers and foliage to order in and when to order. For example, for flowers that arrive in bud, we need to give them time to open, whereas more sensitive flowers need to come in closer to your wedding date. This may also change if we have unexpected hot or cold weather
• Having a workspace that is cool and large enough to store everything
• Sourcing and ordering vases etc
• Liaising with your venue and other suppliers such as caterers, cake makers etc
• Processing invoices

Read how we bring a wedding design to life.

The flowers

Then of course there's the flowers. We buy the highest quality flowers available from partners we know and trust.

Creating your arrangements

• Your florist(s) are highly trained and skilled in what they do and it is only fair to pay them a fair wage (plus pension and annual leave) for a long, physical, high-pressured, hard days work
• When the flowers arrive (normally 2-4 days before your wedding) the florists carefully check:
• that the right stems have come in
• that the right number of stems have come in 
• that the flowers are in perfect condition
• whether we need to speed-up or slow-down the blooming process
• we condition each stem (removing leaves, cutting and putting in fresh water) and store the flowers somewhere safe until it's time to make your arrangements
• we then need to keep an eye on them to ensure they are perfect for your special day
• Most of your wedding flowers will be prepared the day before your wedding with the team of florists taking time and care to create your vision
• Your arrangements will be carefully packaged and loaded on to one of our vans ready for delivery and set-up at your venue

Meet our Team and find out what they love about working at Gardenia.

Overheads

Like all businesses, we have general running costs....

• Software costs
• Maintaining premises and vehicles
• Operating in a sustainable and ethical way (read about our approach to sustainability).

Tips for keeping your wedding costs down

• The key to keeping costs down is by being flexible on the selection of flowers and trusting your florist (our pre-design is a great option for this).
• Stick to simple arrangements that don't take as much time or non-floral ingredients to assemble (eg. garlands take a long time to make and that time needs to be accounted for)
• Opt for arrangements that can be simply delivered and don't require installation time and charges
• Work with a local florist to keep transport time down (they're also likely to know your venue well)
• Visit Covent Garden Flower Market or your local flower farm and have fun doing your flowers yourself