Ten flower decisions worth making early
Most florals go wrong in the planning rather than in the arranging. These are the choices that decide how the room looks, made months before anything is cut.
Flowers are the fastest way to change how a room feels and the easiest place to spend money without anyone noticing you did. The difference is almost always decided in the spring, not in the week of the wedding.
Buy the season, not the picture
The single biggest saving available to any couple is agreeing to be flexible about variety. Peonies in October have to fly, and they arrive tired. The same money in October buys dahlias at their absolute best, grown an hour away. Pick the palette and the shape; let the market pick the stems.
Ten decisions
- Choose the colorway before the flowers — it survives a change of season, a specific variety does not.
- Decide where people will stand, and light that, rather than decorating where they will sit.
- Put height on half the tables, not all of them. A room of identical arrangements reads as a conference.
- Keep the centerpieces below eye level or well above it. Nothing in between.
- Reuse the ceremony arrangements at the reception. Build them so two people can move them in ten minutes.
- Foliage is not filler. A good green base is what makes a small flower budget look deliberate.
- Order one more buttonhole than you need. There is always one more.
- Check the venue’s candle policy before designing anything around candles.
- Ask who clears up, and when. Some venues charge by the hour after midnight.
- Keep a bucket of spare stems backstage. Something always gets crushed.
What to spend the last of the budget on
The bouquet, and the arch or table you will stand in front of during the ceremony. Those two appear in more photographs than everything else combined.
