How much do wedding flowers cost in 2022?
September 13, 2022
Here at the flower shop we LOVE weddings, big ones, small ones, traditional ones and ‘funky way out there’ ones. The bit we like best is that every single one is different and an opportunity and challenge to take a couple’s ideas and hopes and turn them into floral displays that will stay with them for a lifetime in their wedding photos.
As with everything in life however, there is always a price attached and we are super keen to try and make sure that we are as helpful as possible, so aim to address the question of “What will it cost for my wedding flowers?” in this short piece.
How much should I budget for wedding flowers?
This is never an easy question to answer as there are so many different factors that all have an impact on cost, that we will never give out a price for a wedding without first sitting with the bride, and hopefully groom too, for a proper consultation to understand how you see the role of flowers in your special day.
As a general rule, the flower spend is usually around 10% of the total cost of the wedding. Some couples will spend less, some more depending on how important florals are to their day.
A few evenings scrolling through Pinterest and Instagram looking at what styles, colours and installations excite you will help guide us in helping make your day exactly as you want it
You many find it helpful to think about your wedding flowers as 3 separate options:
Variations in each of these areas will determine the overall cost of your wedding flowers.
Bridal flowers
Think of these as personal flowers, they include the bride’s bouquet, bridesmaids’ flowers, buttonholes, corsages, flower crowns, etc.
Clearly, if you have multiple bridesmaids this cost can escalate quite quickly.
We would suggest that you budget between £400 - £600 for this element of your wedding flowers.
Ceremony flowers
Are you getting married at a civil ceremony or church? Sometimes, ceremony spaces are beautiful in their own right and need little or no floral decoration allowing you to keep the cost down in this area, alternatively a few statement pieces and pew ends can really set the tone for the day.
An increasingly popular option is to re-install the flowers used for the ceremony at the reception venue, this is especially popular at venues where both are on the same site.
We recently created the beautiful moon gate display, below, as the backdrop for the bride & groom during the ceremony and, very carefully, relocated to the reception area where it served as a great selfie / picture location through the evening reception.
We would suggest that you budget between £500 - £1500 for this element of your wedding flowers.
Reception flowers
We find this is often the area that needs the most thought as spaces tend to be large and providing table decorations and signature pieces that will decorate the room where most time will be spent can challenge budgets. Thankfully, being local florist means that the teams in our Witney and Oxford branches know many of the local wedding venues extremely well. They know from past experience what’s worked well, and as result, will happily provide inspiration and advice however opulent or conservative your ambitions.
For example, prioritising key areas with a small number of dramatic pieces such as a floral chandelier or a floral archway and decorating tables with a number of bud vases can be more cost effective, and have a greater wow factor, than having 10 or 12 traditional table decorations..
We would suggest that you budget between £300 - £2000 for this element of your wedding flowers.
What factors affect the cost of wedding flowers?
The type of venue can make a big difference to spend, we find ‘Blank canvas’ venues such as Marquee’s almost always benefit from statement pieces and generally require more decoration, potentially increasing the overall cost, whereas often more traditional venues such as country manor houses have a style and grandeur of their own and need far less decoration.
Seasonality will have an impact on costs and availability / choice of flowers for your wedding; a valentine’s wedding decorated with red roses may sound super romantic but demand is very high and availability is low so costs will be inflated. Similarly, Christmas weddings will have a limited choice of flowers available and costs are high due to transport costs.
Our best recommendation in managing cost is to trust your florist; they will know what flower is in season and how best to create the style and colours that you agree on in the most cost-effective manner.
Will cost go up or down for 2023 Weddings?
Sadly we have seen huge increases in the floristry industry, like most areas of the economy, over the last 2 years impacted by flower shortages, transport shortages and changes to import requirements from the EU, so the simple answer is that it is very unlikely that we will see prices fall.
Like many florists we are doing our best to mitigate these costs but options are limited to do so.
Book your free wedding consultation today!
If you are looking for a wedding florist our best advice would be to book a free wedding consultation with either our team in Witney or Oxford as soon as possible as we are still seeing very high numbers of enquiries as the backlog of COVID delayed weddings continues to work through.