"It is a privilege and dream-
come-true for me to grow and deliver intoxicating beauty."
- Paula Rice
Paula Rice is a professional cut flower farmer and florist providing intoxicating beauty to North Idaho for 15 years. She loves growing and playing with flowers and seeks ways to keep her passion alive and strong by finding solutions to the complexities of operating a growing and designing business in zone 4. It has been quite the education. When she’s not working the fields, you can find her walking the fields, eating raspberries, and wondering what she should make for dinner.
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It can be challenging to understand how many DIY flowers you will need when designing your wedding flowers. Several factors need to be considered.
There are three areas where flowers decorate a wedding:
Use this cheat sheet to help you create your wedding flower list.
Pro Tip: As you move down this list, assign each element a rough budget amount to understand what the overall cost of your DIY flowers may be. You'll learn how to estimate this soon.
The style informs your flower choice, and your flower choice can make a difference in how many blooms you will need. If you are elegant and lush, many of the flowers you may love are bigger, like peonies, roses, and dahlias. They take up more space in a design, and while they are more expensive, you may need fewer stems.
If you prefer a wildflower look, the flowers are smaller and varied and, depending on your container size and how big/lush you want the bouquet, you may require more blooms to create the look.
The main idea is that your style will affect the form, shape, and size of the flowers you choose, which will then affect how many flowers you will need per container.
All peonies, ok… imagine that you need 10 ($30). All wildflowers, ok, imagine that you need 1 1/2 bunches ($18) for the same container and size.
If you want full and lush designs, you will need more flowers per arrangement. An effective way to understand how many flowers you will need and how much they may cost is to think about how many bunches per design you think you may need and calculate that number by an average cost per bunch.
Don’t leave, that only sounds hard. Imagine walking into the grocery store and picking up a bouquet (a straight bunch) of stock or snapdragons, that is a bunch. What is the cost of that bunch?
Now imagine you picking and choosing several of these bunches to purchase and build an arrangement, mixing and choosing different varieties. Hold the group in your hand and imagine if that is enough to create the design you want.
Practice this the next time you are at the grocery store, or farmer’s market, or a flower farm stand. Take note of the cost.
(A typical bunch will have ten stems, some are bushy with multiple flowers and will go a long way, and some are a single flower per stem).
Think about the opening of your container/vase. If they are bud vases or narrow-mouth canning jars (2.5″), you will need fewer flowers than if your container is a bowl with a 10″ opening.
In the photo below, on the left, you can see that you may only need one bunch per table if you use bud vases and a small pint-sized vase. On the left, if you want something fuller, it may take 3+ bunches per vase.
Here’s an Example: Let’s think about the reception tables. If you are planning 300 guests with 35 reception tables and have allowed yourself:
Say you are buying DIY flowers online or from a grocery store. The average cost of their bunches can be $12 – $25 (This does not account for shipping and you should consider a certain amount of flowers lost in the shipping process.)
Here is an idea of the cost of DIY flowers for smaller-sized flower arrangements. This graph shows the cost of the flowers for a simple airier look versus a more full, lush look.
DIY Flowers | Simple | Lush |
Bridal Bouquet | $35 | $75 |
6 Bridesmaids Bouquets | $90 | $120 |
8 Boutonnieres | $15 | $15 |
4 Corsages | $10 | $10 |
Arbor Flowers & Foliage | $120 | $250 |
Guest book arrangement | $25 | $55 |
Cake flowers | $12 | $20 |
15 reception tables using pint jars | $150 | $225 |
Total Cost | $457 | $770 |
Note: Be careful, a grocery store bunch often comes with fewer stems, not the industry standard of 10 stems per bunch. This would drastically short you on your estimated needs and skew the price.)
With all the variables to think about, this can be a bit overwhelming. When you book with us and use our locally grown, farm-fresh foliage and flowers, the flowers come with our support.
Fill out the Wedding Inquiry Form to see if we are available to build your Custom Wedding Package and help you figure out your needs or, if your event is very small, you can choose the Small Event option and make an order right now.
Oh!! We have an unmanned farm stand that is open 24/7/365 that we fill with farm fresh flowers during the season April – September. Check out our farm stand.
When buying and designing your own DIY wedding flowers, there is a lot to be prepared for. Make this plan ahead and you’ll have no problems.
What to Expect When Ordering Flowers from a Farmer-Florist; How Much They Cost and What You Need to Know Understanding how to order wedding flowers and what to expect when visiting with a florist will empower you to enter the conversation confidently. While it’s impossible to provide all the details for every wedding, walking through […]
It can be challenging to understand how many DIY flowers you will need when designing your wedding flowers. Several factors need to be considered
"My name is Paula Rice and I have been growing and playing with cut flowers in zone 4 for 15 years. I speak many dialects of flower quite fluently and have loved creating a life rooted in growing."
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