Everything You Need To Know About Wedding Flowers

Most wedding traditions are reasonably new (it was Queen Victoria that brought in white wedding dresses, after all). But flowers have been tied to weddings since more or less the dawn of time. Of course, for most of history, having flowers at your wedding meant… picking some flowers. And these days having flowers at your wedding means figuring out florists fees, or getting comfortable with thorn strippers and floral sheers.

Hire a Florist? Or DIY?

It’s easy to think that you have to hire a florist (or floral designer) to take care of all your wedding flowers, or go totally DIY. Fact check: you don’t. And using a professional for some of your florals while DIYing the rest can be a great middle ground. If you’re only looking to hire out some of your wedding flowers, you might need to do a little extra research when hiring a florist. A lot of higher end floral design studios have price minimums, and will only take on full weddings. However, with a little research, you can often find a florist that will take on a smaller number of projects (though delivery might not be included).

Here are some options to consider:

• Hire someone to create your bouquets (and any corsages and boutonnieres that you might want), and take care of centerpieces on your own. Chances are, the flowers you’ll care about most are the ones that you’re holding… and creating a truly stunning bouquet requires a lot of skill. So get a pro to make you the prettiest personal flowers ever, and handle the rest on your own.
• Hire out the bouquets, and make non floral centerpieces… which can be created well in advance of the wedding with minimal stress. See our full roundup of non-floral centerpiece tutorials for more ideas.
• Hire out the bouquets, skip the centerpieces. Question: how many wedding centerpieces can you remember? Answer: probably not many. While centerpieces are nice, they often take a lot of money and effort to create, and get minimal guest attention. If you have long tables, or smaller tables, you can often skip the centerpieces without people even noticing. The minute the table is piled with food, the centerpieces are lost in the shuffle.

(And obviously, keep in mind, skipping flowers all together is always a valid option.)