Question about wedding flowers?
Hi. I’m trying to get an idea of how much money I saved (if any) by doing my own wedding flowers (middle to high quality silks). Anybody out there (brides, florists, etc) who can make an educated guess of how much the following list of items would have cost me if I had used a traditional wedding florist? All of the flowers used were roses, and some filler flowers and fall leaves were used as accents.
1 very large round bride bouquet with 2-3 dozen large open roses, fall leaves, and filler flowers, with handle fully wrapped in satin ribbon
2 large round maid of honor bouquets with 5 open roses and 10 rose buds, few fall leaves, some filler flowers, handles fully wrapped in satin ribbon.
5 medium sized bridesmaids bouquets containing 4 open roses, and 8 rosebuds, few fall leaves, some filler flower handles fully wrapped in satin ribbon.
3 mother wrist corsages, 2-3 roses each
11 single rose bud boutonnieres
1 groom boutonniere with 2 rosebuds, accent flowers
16 pew markers, containing satin bows and 3 roses each
4 medium sized church arrangements containing about 2 dozen roses each
2 small swags and 2 garlands, 4 additional decoration bouquets
FYI, I already have the flowers. The list above is everything that I have and have already done. The bouquets look real from a few feet away. Actually, a few months ago I bought a bouquet of fresh orange roses from the grocery store and then compared them to my silks and they looked extremely similar…actually the silks looked better because their color was more vibrant. Honestly, flowers weren’t all that important to me…I mean I want them to be nice but I didn’t want the flowers to be one of the biggest expenses of my wedding. There were other places I would rather spend money, on things that mean more to me. So that is why I went with silks. But I’ve just been wondering what I would have paid ballpark for all of those fresh roses if I had gone through a florist.
I worked as a florist of a couple of years. What I know its that good to high quality silk flowers cost about the same as fresh. The advantage is that when you are finished with them they are still around to appreciate, for years to come. Where you have really saved your money, is in the labour of making all the arrangements say around 20.00 per hr. Where you will receive your biggest savings, is if you resell all the florals as done pieces to another bride for their wedding.
Hope this helps.
November 24th, 2009 at 1:06 am
What I’ve learned from doing wedding flowers is that hand made is WAY cheaper than just buying them. Depending, it could total hundreds of dollars saved. What you want to look at is time. Is it really worth going through hours upon hours of putting these things together, or would you rather just pay for them to be done?
References :
November 24th, 2009 at 1:20 am
I worked as a florist of a couple of years. What I know its that good to high quality silk flowers cost about the same as fresh. The advantage is that when you are finished with them they are still around to appreciate, for years to come. Where you have really saved your money, is in the labour of making all the arrangements say around 20.00 per hr. Where you will receive your biggest savings, is if you resell all the florals as done pieces to another bride for their wedding.
Hope this helps.
References :
November 24th, 2009 at 1:30 am
I’ve never seen any silk flowers that look very good. Sure you have them afteward, but why? And like someone else said, they really aren’t any cheaper. Plus my church does not allow artificial flowers on the altar – got to think about that.
The men definitely wouldn’t care what was in their boutennieres, so you could save some money there.
But to save realy money and have pretty flowers, I would look into a Thrifty Florist store type place or a grocery store (as opposed to a more fancy boutique type florist) to supply the flowers.
I would also think about using potted plants for the church arrangements (not on the altar) – Maybe spring bulbs for a Spring wedding or Mums for a Fall Wedding – Poinsettias for Christmas.
References :