Flowers and foliage
Midlands Wedding Styling Flowers and foliage
Flowers are the line where the same brief can differ by a factor of three, and almost all of that difference is stem choice and season rather than skill.
Florists quote on three things: the flowers themselves, the labour to condition and arrange them, and the logistics of getting arrangements into a room at the right moment. Couples tend to see only the first.
What actually drives the cost
Stem choice. A bloom that has to be imported out of season costs several times its seasonal equivalent, and two schemes that look similar in a photograph can sit either side of that line.
Volume, obviously, but not linearly. A large loose arrangement in a wide vessel uses far more stems than the same visual impact achieved in a narrow one.
Structure. Anything installed rather than placed, an arch, a hanging piece, a mantelpiece run, carries labour, mechanics and usually a second visit to strike it.
Conditioning time. Flowers arrive days early and need processing. That is real labour before anything is arranged.
Delivery timing. A florist who must install during your ceremony turnaround is buying a slot in a very tight window. See setup and turnaround.
Season
British seasonality is the single biggest lever you control. Asking a florist what is at its best in your month, and building from that, typically produces a better result for less money than specifying a stem and asking them to source it.
Flowers from the Farm is a network of British growers and a useful starting point for what is genuinely available when, and for finding growers in the Midlands who supply florists directly.
Broadly, spring gives you bulbs and blossom, early summer the peak of garden roses and peonies, late summer dahlias and grasses, autumn foliage and berries, and winter evergreens, hellebores and forced bulbs. Peonies in particular have a short British window that does not stretch, whatever you are prepared to pay.
Fresh, dried, faux and hired
Fresh is the default and the most forgiving of a scheme changing late.
Dried has become a genuine option rather than a compromise, keeps indefinitely, travels well and suits autumn and winter schemes. It is not cheaper by default, and good dried work is priced like good fresh work.
Faux at the top end is convincing and at the bottom end is not, and the gap is visible in photographs. Where it earns its place is in installations that must go up the day before, or in venues where fresh flowers cannot be watered.
Hired arrangements, where the florist takes everything back, cut cost and waste and are worth asking about for ceremony pieces that are seen for forty minutes.
Vessels, and who owns them
Establish early whether vases, urns, plinths and mechanics are supplied, hired or yours. They are frequently hired, which means they fall under a hire agreement with replacement values and a collection arrangement. See hiring décor.
Then establish who collects them and when, because a florist who is not coming back and a venue that will not store means the vessels go home in your car at midnight.
Moving flowers between rooms
Reusing ceremony flowers on the reception tables is sensible, common, and needs to be someone's explicit job with a stated time. It cannot happen while guests are in either room, which means it happens in the turnaround, and the turnaround is short.
Ask the florist whether it is included or charged, and ask the venue whether their staff will do it. The answer is sometimes yes, and it is never yes by default.
What to bring to the first meeting
The venue, the date, the room dimensions if you have them, the light in the room at the time of day you will use it, and your palette. Not a folder of photographs of other people's weddings, or at least not only that.
Then the constraints from venue restrictions: whether anything may be attached to anything, whether flame is permitted near arrangements, and what the access window is. A florist who learns about a two-hour setup window at the final meeting is a florist about to change the design.
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