The Top 5 Wedding Flower Mistakes Couples (and Planners!) Make
Photos by Michael & Melanie
I remember what it was like to be engaged, attempting to plan and budget for a wedding when I had ABSOLUTELY no idea what anything could cost, or what order I should do things in. Luckily for me, I happened to work at a wedding magazine so I had the right information available to me.
Now that I’ve been working in the wedding industry for 15+ years (I’m not that old, I’m sure…I’ve just spent my entire career in weddings!), there are a handful of things that I see couples (and some wedding pros, too!) make mistakes on that I can offer some help on!
Here are some of the most common mistakes that I see couples (and their wedding planners!) making when they get into wedding planning:
1) Getting Hung Up on Specific Flowers
I always want to know a client’s favourite flowers, and the flowers that they absolutely don’t like. Some of you have a list of these prepared, and some of you really don’t care that much. Both of those are good! The problem lies in getting too bogged down in a “must-have” flower. Hopefully we can accommodate that, but the reality is that there’s never a 100% guarantee that I can make it happen and I would really hate to break your heart! We never know if there’s going to be a big storm, or a shipping problem, or some celebrity wedding that takes the entire stock of a certain flower that week.
The other reason why I don’t want you to get hung up on specific flowers is because, sometimes, your choices are boring. SORRY! Most of the time when I see this, it’s in planners’ design boards.
So what do you do? All I need you to do is find a few images of bouquet shapes that you like, and colours and textures that you like. I don’t need you to choose the flowers — I’ve got that, and while I love your suggestions, if a planner has talked too in-depth with the client about the flowers before connecting with the floral designer, we end up pigeon-holed into something that can be pretty boring and has already been done before. We want to design something unique and gorgeous for you, and giving us the reigns is going to work out a lot better.
2) Focusing on Design, Without considering the venue
If only every venue was designed to be gorgeous from top to bottom. The reality is, they’re not. I’M TALKING TO YOU, GOLF COURSE CARPET!!! The golf course I had my reception in had purple and ORANGE carpet, and I’m not even joking. What do we do with that!?
There are some venues that I think “meh that feature is so ugly that we should just ignore it,” and there are other times when I absolutely know we need to work with something, rather than against it. And that’s where Pinterest does us dirty. You find these gorgeous ideas that you want to implement in your wedding design and you set your heart on them, and then I have to be the bearer of bad news to tell you: the ceilings in your venue are too low for this. Or, there are posts in your reception space that mean we can’t do this. Or, your venue doesn’t allow us to stake anything into the grass so we cannot do this. Or, since your venue has no natural light, this feature isn’t going to be noticed unless you add professional lighting.
So what do you do? You’ve got to let the venue lead. First, go for a good walk-through of the space and have the venue coordinator provide you with some sample floor plans. Rely on your planner and your florist to offer suggestions that will work with the space and highlight the best parts of it.
*Make sure you’re aware what your venue’s restrictions are, too: can we use real candlelight or only faux? Are they overly specific on what you can do with the floor plan? Are you allowed to suspend or hang anything?
3) not paying attention to Scale
This one is a big personal pet peeve. In my opinion, this is what sets apart “floral designers” from FLORAL DESIGNERS. Same goes for wedding planners and designers. If you’re not considering the scale of the space that you’re working with, or the size of arch that you’re designing on, the height of the ceiling and how low you need to hang the florals above the dinner tables, then you aren’t doing the design justice and it’s going to fall flat.
Hanging a floral installation too high? No one’s going to notice it and the money you spent isn’t serving you. Designing an arch piece that’s too small for the structure? It’s going to underwhelm. Even when we repurpose the ceremony flowers to the reception, we need to think about scale. The large urn arrangement at the front of your ceremony is probably gorgeous from the front and sides, but the back is likely mostly greens to keep your costs manageable, so we can’t repurpose that piece to the centre of an escort card table without everyone seeing the back (some florists refer to this as the “underwear check” — we don’t want you to see our underwear!).
So what do you do? Ask your florist for their recommendations on scale and size, and what might need to be budgeted for a particular piece in order to achieve what it needs to. Maybe that ceremony urn needs to have florals all throughout the back so you can repurpose it. Give us all the floor plans and measurements that your venues provide so we can make the best suggestions possible.
4) Forgetting about setup and logistics
We’re pretty lucky here in Winnipeg that the majority of our venues allow us ample time to set up (some of my colleagues in major cities in the US or Toronto regularly work in venues that only give them 2 hours to set up!). Nevertheless, the logistics of setting up are crucial to making your event work and will also impact your budget: does your venue have a loading elevator or do we need to carry things up a few flights of stairs? Do we only have a couple of hours to set everything up AND flip the flowers from ceremony to reception? If your ceremony is at one location and your reception at a second location, are guests heading directly to the reception? That means that it’s harder for us to repurpose items.
So what do you do? Ask your venue for loading and set up information to pass along to your planner and florist (and anyone else coming to set up: rental companies, linens and draping, lighting!) so they can properly account for the size of staff they will need, and quote your accordingly.
5) Underestimating How much flowers cost
Arguably, this is the biggest problem. And I know — you’ve never done this before. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s okay! But it does mean that you’ll have to do some research, and NOT the kind of research that involves reading all the major wedding blogs “budget guides.” Because they’ve been saying that the average wedding costs $30K for the entire 15 years that I’ve been working in the wedding industry, not updating to reflect inflation, while also only publishing weddings that cost 6 figures.
So what do you do? How do you research what wedding flowers actually cost? Talk to your local florists. Pricing is not always an easy thing to quote because every wedding has a custom list of wants and needs. Choose a small handful of florists who you are interested in, and before sending an official inquiry, ask for their minimum spends or average client spends. Ask “what ballpark range do I need to budget to achieve something like ______ this wedding in your portfolio?” That will go a much longer way to helping you figure out what your budget range should actually be.
For example, my minimum for full service floral design begins at $5000, but my average client spend is around $7500. At the same time, many of the weddings in my portfolio have spent upwards of $15,000 on their wedding flowers. There are a lot of florists who offer set packages for smaller weddings, or an a la carte offering, where you can get their signature design style but without the added cost of customizations. There is something out there for every budget level, but arbitrarily deciding on a number without having a clue if it’s a relevant budget to what you want isn’t going to make it easy on anyone.
To help you out, here are a few past blog posts that highlight pricing info:
Hire a Talented Wedding Floral and Event Designer in Winnipeg
Not to toot my own horn (too much), but I happen to be really good at this — and more than just designing, I’m really good at balancing logistics and budgets with your dreams.
I’d be thrilled to design an incredible atmosphere and accompanying florals for your wedding.
