WHY DO WEDDING FLOWERS COST SO MUCH? With Paragon Floral Design

Ever wondered why wedding flowers cost so much? TNWS supplier Paragon Floral Design give us all of the facts on why your wedding flowers cost as much as they do!

“Hello!

We decided to write this blog to try and explain the cost of flowers (hopefully without boring you to tears). I see so many blog posts now with misinformation and frustration seeming to come, just simply, from lack of subject knowledge. It’s difficult to know how much weddings will cost and our advise would always be to ask each individual supplier for their professional input to guide you. No two weddings are the same so a ‘ballpark’ figure without knowing what you want is nearly impossible to give. Don’t be afraid to discuss budgets, after all each wedding is different and we have all seen every budget range for flowers. If you plan early you will have time to save up and/or manage expectations.

THE GROWERS

Firstly, Where do your flowers come from? Well….. Flowers are grown all over the world, and in every country your professional florist will try to get seasonal local flowers as often as possible to support the local community. To ensure that flowers are available all year round though we must buy from the global market, supplied by highly skilled growers working on a massive scale.

The growers work all day up and down their ‘flower lanes’ picking the flowers at their optimum ripeness. The flowers will go from picked to packaged to loaded onto the transporter, and be at market in a matter of hours!!

THE MARKET

The biggest flower market is in Holland, where many growers sell their flowers. These are then bought  and shipped out all over the world, again, in a matter of hours. It’s a logistical masterpiece! watch the video and I defy you to tell me you don’t want a go on one of those buggies! I know i do.

It’s difficult to imagine on a day-to-day basis why flowers would cost so much, seeing them growing in gardens and fields all over the place. I hope that from these videos you can see the skill involved in looking after this live product and getting it to the exact size and standard required to appear in your wedding. I can tell you that you would be pushed to find 500 or more roses in perfect condition, with straight stems around you that you could pick and use in your wedding (it’s a nice idea though, right?

THE FLORIST

So, what comes next…. Well, after this the flowers are delivered direct to the florist or the wholesaler for collection. Your florist will then ‘condition’ the stems. Each flower has a different kind of stem structure, temperature conditions they prefer and life expectancy. They tend to arrive to us and need leaves removing and maybe thorns removing too. They will all need to go into clean water with their preferred flower food at the correct consistency. Depending on your wedding date the florist will monitor each flower and manage the conditions accordingly to get your flowers open to the correct stage for your wedding day. Some of your flowers may arrive the week before, and some a few days in advance. This is all before we even start to arrange them!. Florists go though years of training to acquire this knowledge, some gaining academic qualifications and all spending years on the job, learning from their peers. Ask your florist about their journey, I guarantee it will be interesting!! (If they say they just opened and quite like flowers, run a mile!!) This all adds to the cost of the flowers too, imagine it like an electrician or a plumber. You pay for their time and skill and the flowers are the ‘parts’ we need to create your designs. OK so you wont get electrocuted or drown if you do it yourself but it will be stressful and you wont get a professional look. After all, do you think we could turn up at your work for 1 day and do your job well?

Once we start to create your bouquets, buttonholes, ceremony designs and table centres, there will be a team of people preparing, wiring individual stems, removing bruised or misshapen petals and organising logistics for delivery and assembly on site. Let me give you an example here… Lets say you have gone for a domed bowl of roses in a medium size for a table of 10 people. This may consist of anywhere between 60 and 90 roses (depending on the fullness). This design may take a professional working at full speed 30 minutes minimum to create. If you have 10 tables that means that you have 1 florist working for 5 hours at least just on the table centres. You may therefore have 2-3 people working on a medium-sized wedding for 1-2 days depending on how intricate the designs are.

So you can see, caring for flowers, prepping, creating, packaging, logistics, love, sweat, laughs and tears go into your wedding preparation from our industry. We genuinely love it, the time we spend with you creating your quote, designing your dream and on the day delivering the seemless service you expect. Flowers are delicate, irregular and beautiful. Man and Woman power is imperative to ensure quality and efficiency and I truly hope that you find this useful to explain the costs involved.

If you have any questions, please get in touch! you can email on [email protected] both Lisa and I will be happy to help and explain”

See more from Paragon Floral Design at The National Wedding Show in Manchester from 22-23 October on Stand F6 and on the Revlon Runway!

#TNWS