Five Smart Ways to Save on Your Wedding Flower Budget and Make Your Floral Vision a Reality!

Dreaming of gorgeous blooms for your wedding day but working within a budget? No matter what your priorities are, there are many ways to cut back on costs for your special day and keep your vision intact. 

We’ve come up with five tips to make your floral vision a reality!

1) Buy wholesale flowers in bulk and DIY!

Making your own bouquets and arrangements will save you a ton of moolah. A big part of the costs from a traditional “brick and mortar” florist is all the labour…so doing the work yourself results in substantial cost savings. Grab a few friends, a glass or two of wine, and have fun! If arranging bouquets feels a bit daunting, there are lots of resources available online or you can always opt to get a florist to make those, and just stick to making the centerpieces.

You can source bulk flowers a couple different ways, local flower farms or the farmers market are good places to start, or if you’re looking for a ‘one-stop-shop’ you can check into You Floral. They sell bulk flowers and greenery in throughout Canada and the US, shipping from a multitude of warehouses to ensure your flowers spend minimal time in transit and arrive fresh and gorgeous. Whether you select a colour-themed wedding floral package or choose your own flowers and greenery, you’ll receive fresh bundles of blooms to arrange into bouquets, garlands, centrepieces and more.

If you’re wondering how much time to budget to arrange flowers yourself… with a few helpful friends and some snacks, a beginner generally needs about 2 – 3 hours to make their wedding flower arrangements. We typically recommend getting your flowers 3 days before and then arranging your flowers the day or two before the event, this way you’re not time crunched and have plenty of time to get to work!

2) Consider Swapping Expensive Blooms And Rely On Greenery

Certain flowers are more expensive than others (a good example of this is carnations vs roses). Use the pricier blooms sparingly – your bridal bouquet is a good place to splurge, and use the less expensive florals in your bridesmaid bouquets. If you’re making an arch, this is a good spot to use budget blooms – from afar people won’t even be able to tell (plus, carnations truly are beautiful). 

Rely on greenery to carry the day, it fills a large volume of space so you don’t need as many flowers to round it out. If you’re pondering what type of greenery to incorporate… keep in mind that it is generally sold by weight, and some types of greenery are more voluminous than others (i.e. myrtle has a very slim profile, vs silver dollar eucalyptus has very large drooping branches and occupies a large space)

3)  For-go (or minimize) Flowers on Tables

Big lucious arrangements are definitely a show-stopper, but you can still get a beautiful vibe by minimizing the number of flowers on your tables. Two options that will save you money are:

• Use bud vases full of a bloom or two rather than having larger sized arrangements
• Use greenery as a garland. 
  • Greenery is gorgeous, long-lasting, and easy peasy – no worrying about wilting or designing. Having a super luxe full garland draping down your tables is going to put you back a pretty penny, but a very cost effective alternative is loosely laying eucalyptus in the center of your table in a minimalistic elegant style.  Using greenery on tables is elegant, beautiful, and affordable.

4) Incorporate Dried Florals

Dried florals can be expensive, there is a lot of labor involved with drying, but the awesome thing about them is they last forever! You can easily re-sell them (there is quite a market for dried florals on Facebook Marketplace), no worries about wilting.

You can incorporate dried flowers into your arrangements and bouquets, or use them standalone as statement pieces. Pampas grass is especially great for weddings, it is so versatile, use it as an aisle marker, in your arch, or cut it into smaller pieces to use in your bouquets. 

5) Share The Love

Flowers have a pretty decent lifespan (as long as they are kept in water). Try finding another couple with a wedding close to yours (bonus if your wedding is a Saturday and theirs is a Sunday) and share your florals. This especially works well if you have a eucalyptus-focused wedding – that stuff lasts forever! A tip here, organize these months in advance, it’s harder to find someone last minute to join in with you! I wouldn’t recommend sharing wedding party bouquets, since they’ll be out of water for quite a while when you’re photographing, but centerpieces are fair game.

Hopefully these tips give you a bit of inspiration on how to save money on your wedding florals and still have gorgeous flower arrangements that you’ll be proud of and that set the stage for your special day.

If you have any questions about DIY’ing, send us an email at hello@youfloral.ca – we always are keen to chat!

Cheers,

Sarah & Katharine