We have to make a decision about flowers but we’re not sure
what to do. We’re paying ourselves and trying to keep costs down and when I heard
that people pay thousands of dollars for flowers, I was just like no, we’re not
doing that (not knocking other people – if you can afford it, they’re certainly
beautiful, so go for it). I figured we’ll get real flowers for bouquets, bouts,
etc., and then make centerpieces with candles or something.
Anyway, fast forward to now (aka time to start making these
decisions), and we talked to a few florists and a whole foods. The whole foods
would be cheaper. However, the florist we spoke to didn’t seem to know much
about doing wedding flowers or even offer any guidance about what flowers to use.
I asked for an estimate and she said she needs to know which flowers, and I
told her that other than sunflowers and a general color scheme, I just want
whatever is cheapest. She didn’t seem to really get this and also did not offer
any suggestions for what flowers we could use. We finally got an estimate for
bouquets, bouts, etc, and were told prices range from $350-$700 for those
things. Centerpieces would start at $40 each and when I asked about a ceremony
arch, she said she didn’t think she had them and that the estimate on the sheet
was for decorating one, which can run about $300. So that means the cheapest
estimate would be about $1,050 for everything. And that assumes we do
everything as cheaply as possible.
Then we went to a florist. This was an entirely different
experience. I told him what we needed as far as number of bouquets, what we
were looking for (again, sunflowers but otherwise just colors), and he immediately
listed ideas, brought flowers over, etc. He gave us an estimate of $800 for
bouquets, bouts, etc., which is obviously higher than whole foods. However, he
said he could do an entire arch for $250 (like, including the arch itself and
the decoration) and small table pieces for $40 each. This brings the total to
about $1,500.
So basically here’s what we’re deciding: do we save a lot of
money and use whole foods for just bouquets and stuff and make our own centrepieces,
do we just go with the florist because it really isn’t that bad compared to
other florists/what people spend in our area on flowers, or do we go with the
florist for bouquets and arch and do our own centerpieces? We would definitely
love to save money in general, but the fact that the whole foods florist seemed
sort of bewildered by my questions is not inspiring a great deal of confidence
and perhaps the extra money is worth it to have the florist take care of the
whole thing.
Help?