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The Value of a Wedding Florist

Considering cutting costs and just being your own florist? Take a minute to read this For Brides blog! Specially written for the newly engaged couple, I’m sharing wedding planning advice and guests articles by wedding vendors to help make your wedding planning easier. Today’s post was written by Kari Schriever of Lark Floral with some behind the scenes insight into just how much work a florist does to prepare for your wedding!

 

The Value of a Wedding Florist

Planning a wedding can feel overwhelming. There are so many different details to consider from the venue to the clothing to the table settings. There’s one aspect of a wedding that can tie it all together – the flowers! Thoughtfully designed flowers will reflect the feeling and setting of your wedding. Delphinium and daisies are just right for a casual, rustic barn wedding. Orchids and calla lilies are more at home in a formal ballroom. Flowers bring your color palette to life, complimenting everything from your bridesmaids dresses and the groomsmen’s ties, to your table linens and flatware.

You know you want flowers at your wedding, but is it worth hiring a florist? Can’t you just DIY your wedding flowers? Well… you could, but let me tell you what goes into preparing flowers for a wedding.

 

Planning and Ordering

Florists spend hours carefully selecting the perfect varieties and combinations of flowers for your color palette, season, and budget. Locating and buying the best quality blooms from local and international growers takes a lot of time, knowledge, and sources. It takes design experience to know the quantities needed of each type of flower and how they will perform. Without experience, it’s easy to under order and run out of flowers, or over order and waste money.

 

Processing and Storage

Once the flowers are delivered, they must be unpackaged, cleaned, processed, and stored in optimal conditions (you’ll need lots of buckets and a floral cooler) so that they are in peak condition on the wedding day. This often means coaxing flowers open or delaying them from opening too soon over a period of several days. There’s also the stress of this living product coming in less than perfect or dying prematurely. Will you know what to do when your hydrangea starts to droop or your roses start to bend? Do you have space to store buckets and buckets of flowers? Do you have the workspace to design and store your finished product?

 

Design Time and Skill

A typical wedding with bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, centerpieces, and ceremony pieces will usually require 2-3 days of design work, even for an experienced designer. Someone with less experience will likely take even longer and will probably experience frustration and exhaustion as the hours tick by. Unfortunately, the flowers can’t be done ahead of time. They are perishable and the work must be done in the days immediately before the wedding. A trained florist also has skills in mechanics, design principles, and composition that the average DIYer might be lacking. That will show in the quality of your finished product.

 

Packaging and Delivery

Packaging the arrangements so that nothing gets broken, spilled, or jostled is a job in itself. Do you have a vehicle large enough to transport all the boxed up flowers? Delivery and set up on the day of the wedding also takes time and a strong back.

 

Clean up

Oh the clean up! Doing flowers creates a huge mess. There will be cut stems and leaves on the floor, packaging and boxes to dispose of, buckets to be washed, vehicles to be vacuumed out. Count on several hours of clean up after all the other work is done.

 

When you hire a florist you are paying for the flowers, but you are also paying for their service (see above!) and expertise. An experienced florist will manage all of these tasks so that you don’t have all that work and worry in the days just before your wedding. It’s worth every penny to be able relax and enjoy that precious time with your family and guests. A professional floral designer will do all the dirty work behind the scenes and you are free to enjoy the beautiful, fresh flowers that will just magically appear on your wedding day!

 

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I'm a Virginia wedding photographer serving the DMV and worldwide. I strive to balance the composed with the candid and capture vibrant, timeless images for my couples.

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Six years of wedding industry has taught me a lot! This quick guide is designed for you two to get your wedding experience started with just a few easy steps!

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