How Much Do Wedding Flowers Cost in 2022?

Wondering why wedding flowers seem expensive? Have you heard the rumours that wedding florists take a costing and just treble it when the word ‘wedding’ is mentioned? In this blog we will explain what wedding flowers cost today and why. Hopefully, we can take away those bad vibes and create some transparency around wedding flower prices.  

Costing Wedding Flowers

Costing prices for wedding flowers packages is always hard because the variation between what different couples want is so vast. 

Click below for a guide in our wedding brochure outlining average wedding flowers costs. This is based on three levels: personal flowers, personal flowers and tables, personal flowers, tables and floral installations.

The Northern Flower Garden

The Northern Flower Garden

The Northern Flower Garden

Edward Ashley Photography

The Northern Flower Garden

Obviously, more designs and larger designs will be more expensive but there can also be a big difference in the cost of different flowers depending on seasonality and availability. Therefore, we would always recommend you sit down with your wedding florist and be open about your wedding budget for flowers. They can then tailor a wedding flower package unique to you at a price you are comfortable with. They can talk you through flower choices, quantities and how to get the best impact for your budget. 

We are North East florists based in Newcastle and Sunderland. Click below to book a free wedding flower consultation with The Northern Flower Garden. 

Sourcing Wedding Flowers

Sourcing wedding flowers is probably more tricky than you would think. Being a fresh product, flowers are not always continuously available and the popular varieties will sell out fast. So, we need to keep returning to the online flower auctions for a good part of the week prior to designing to secure the flowers as they become available at the right price for our customers. We fall back on our experience to find you the best alternative when we can’t secure our first choice, so our couples still get the floral designs that they want.

Timing Your Flowers

Once all your flowers are ordered, we then collect them and bring them back to the studio but the timing of this needs careful consideration. Our goal as wedding florists is to have all your flowers fully developed on your wedding day for maximum impact. However, not all flowers develop at the same rate, Lilies, for example, will take a lot longer to develop than roses, so we would order and collect these a lot earlier to allow for this. We can make multiple trips to the flower wholesalers on any given week to get this timing right for our couples and it does make all the difference.  

Caring For Your Flowers

Back in our studio, each stem is conditioned and checked. We have different procedures for different flowers but essentially this means that we remove all the lower foliage and cut the stems before placing them in clean water with flower food. Getting the nutrients and hydration to your flowers at this stage is so important for their longevity. And then we wait… We store them at their optimum temperature, checking them regularly for any issues and we wait for them to develop ready for design. A bit like baby sitting really 😂

Our Standards, at The Northern Flower Garden

At The Northern Flower Garden, our quality control is rigorous and our standards are high. All flowers are graded by the wholesaler for quality and if you visit any florist you will be buying graded flowers. We only buy premium grade flowers for our wedding work for the best quality but sadly, these are more expensive. We also check every stem, discarding anything blemished or damaged, so we will always buy more than we need to accommodate for this.

Trending Work

We always tailor our work and style to what our couples want but like all industries, wedding floristry is driven by trends. At The Northern Flower Garden we put a lot of work into researching these trends, experimenting with new varieties of flowers and alternative mechanics. It’s a continuous cycle of learning. Currently, textured designs and bespoke flowers in a country garden style are trending which can contain anything from 5-10 different varieties of flowers, making this type of work more expensive.    

But, Why are Flowers so Expensive?

This is a good question and the answer is complex as there are numerous reasons.

Firstly, there was Brexit.  As most of our flowers are shipped in from Holland there are now new costs and procedures around their importation which are being passed down to the consumer. 

Then, there was the Covid crisis and subsequent lockdowns which hit the flower industry hard, from which it is still trying to recover. There is a good article by the BBC on this:

Finally, the recent hike in oil and gas prices also impacts flower costs. Flowers are grown in huge greenhouses in optimum conditions which are maintained through heating and lighting and this is done on an industrial scale. We are paying our suppliers more for our flowers to cover these costs.

Conclusion

So, there we have it. Economics which are out of our control, issues around working with natural products like flowers, our personal standards on which our wedding flower work is built and the costs of innovation and design. All these elements need to be considered when running a viable wedding flower business whilst striking a balance of fairness for our customers. We would love to know your thoughts on this, because, without our fabulous customers, there is no business…