It’s amazing how much some brides are willing to pay for their wedding flowers.
If you’re watching pennies, flowers can make a huge gash in your budget – especially if you don’t use seasonal wedding flowers.
Have you ever attended a wedding where the bride and groom have had to use cheap fake wedding flowers in place of real ones because they couldn’t afford what they wanted?
Some silk flowers are affordable and beautiful.
It’s a wedding planner’s job to find deals and negotiate with vendors. If you don’t have a powerful wedding planner, then you’d better become a take-no-prisoners businesswoman and get the wedding flowers you deserve.
When you walk into a local flower shop, most will have a book you can see of previous wedding flowers and bouquets or arrangements they’ve done. If not, walk out the door.
They won’t usually have prices on them, but when you start talking to the florist about your wedding flowers, you want to tell her up front that you don’t have a big budget. Don’t give her numbers – just say, “small.”
Tell her you want to know what kinds of wedding flowers they can substitute for the ones in the pictures that look almost identical to the more expensive version.
Also ask about simplistic wedding flower designs – such as a pure cut bouquet. If a florist has to create an arrangement, it’s far more expensive to buy. You might even get a book on how to create floral designs and then buy the wedding flowers and do them yourself.
Wedding flowers can mean just a simple bridal bouquet or every other floral presentation you need – including groom and groomsmen boutonnières, corsages for moms, ceremony and reception décor, and a tossing bouquet if you plan to keep your own.
You may have to pick and choose or forego certain floral arrangements. For instance, if you can’t afford lavish centerpieces, then use candles or other displays for your centerpieces and save the flowers for your bouquet and aisle décor.
Or use the ceremony wedding flowers in your reception. There’s often a gap between the ceremony and reception, so someone could take the wedding flowers and arrange them on the tables for the reception.
Before you skimp and go with fake wedding flowers, understand that it sometimes costs more to go the fake route than it does to go real. Choose your wedding flowers with your color scheme in mind and be flexible when it comes to choosing the exact type of flower – if you’re willing to take substitutes, then you’ll find you can probably afford to have real blooms on your big day.
