Saving Money on Wedding Floral Arrangements

Wedding flowers are one area where people are always looking to reduce costs, and there are lots of good ideas out there for doing it. Here are some of the most popular, ranked from the better ideas to some of the, well, dubious ones.

In Season

Picking in-season flowers is not only cheaper, it’s ecologically responsible and it helps improve the overall attractiveness of your wedding. Spring flowers really help convey the right feeling for a spring wedding, for example, with all the lush exuberance of their thick stems and succulent blooms. If you want to use mostly flowers from a different season, maybe that’s actually the better time for your ceremony, anyway.

Use Your Florist’s Expertise

Your florist is an expert on flowers, and often knows how to get great-looking results cheaply. Be honest about your budget and give them guidance about colors and sizes of flowers, then let them design the right arrangements for you. If you demand certain flowers, you’re more likely to pay top dollar for them.

Have an Outdoor Wedding

This is Colorado, so why not take advantage of our 300+ days of sunshine and hold your wedding outdoors? At Stonebrook Manor, our gardens are already beautiful and have numerous beds of flowers, so you won’t have to buy as many flowers.

Greenery and Alternative Decorations

I’m not going to knock flowers, but there are a lot of other ways to make attractive wedding decorations, including renting potted plants to provide greenery and creating alternative centerpieces. You can use many things for your centerpieces, such as candles, water globes, and even fruit bowls. A selection of fruit appropriate to your wedding theme can be attractive and festive.

Coordinate with another Wedding

The theory here is that if you know someone else getting married at about the same time or talk to the bride at the same venue and even day as you, the two of you can share flowers and split the cost. This may work if one or both of you are chill enough to accept you may not even get the color of flowers you want. However, it’s also possible that the second wedding may inherit some less-attractive flowers, especially if it’s a very hot day. And let’s not forget what kids sometimes do to flowers.

Shrink the Wedding Party

Sure, shrinking the wedding party will mean fewer corsages, but usually the size of the wedding party is determined by personal relationships and not by cost. All your friends know that not everyone can be in the wedding party, but you don’t want anyone to feel they were cut out of the ceremony just to save a few bucks.

Get Married on a Holiday

The church will already be decorated for the holiday, they say, so you can save tons on flowers. Sure . . . if you want to have Easter or Christmas decorations in your wedding. If you do, great. If not, this is a pretty limiting option.

Silk Flowers

There are two problems with silk flowers: they’re often unattractive and they’re not always cheaper than fresh in-season flowers. Plus, if you don’t have a use for them after ceremony, they are a big waste.

Order Flowers Wholesale

This is, by far, the worst idea for trying to save money, unless you are or know a professional flower arranger. Otherwise you risk having arrangements that look terrible because they are poorly put together or are wilted by the day of the ceremony. Otherwise, hiring an arranger will eat up most of your savings, and you still have to work hard to make sure you get them at the right time.

Ditto with cutting flowers from your garden. Unless you’re a master gardener, they will likely not look as good as professional arrangements.

If you are looking for ways to save money on your wedding, the experienced people at Stonebrook Manor can help. We have helped thousands of Denver-area couples to enjoy beautiful weddings at a reasonable cost.

To learn more, please contact Stonebrook Manor today to talk to us or schedule a tour.