How much do wedding flowers cost in Sydney? There's no set price. What you invest depends on your guest numbers, the scale of your ceremony and reception designs, any installations, the season, and your venue's access and timings. That's also why two florists can quote very different amounts for the same brief.
We get asked about this all the time, so here's how wedding flower pricing works behind the scenes, and how we put together a proposal for your wedding.
1. Why are wedding flowers expensive?
A very common misconception is that whenever the word ‘wedding’ is used, such as ‘wedding flowers’, vendors in the wedding industry will put on some ridiculous mark up to rip off the masses. This is completely false. Before we entered the industry ourselves, we thought the same, so we understand why this is a common assumption.
Whilst wedding flowers seem expensive, you’re actually receiving so much more than just the flowers on the day. So what else are you getting?
A) Quality flowers (and we care for them like babies)
When it comes to flowers for weddings, we don’t use just any seasonally available variety. We go through an entire process of understanding what the colour scheme of your wedding is, the look and theme of your wedding, and what your floral preferences are. The floral selection process is very specific and we only use the top quality varieties available. This is quite different to picking up a bouquet of pre-designed seasonal flowers wrapped up at a local florist shop.
We literally inspect all the petals and leaves of each stem that we use for your wedding, from the day we pick up the flowers from our growers and wholesalers, up until the moment we deliver them to you or set up on-site. Often, we also feature premium flowers flown in from interstate and overseas when the design calls for them.
B) Bespoke planning & design, emails, logistics… All the behind the scenes stuff!
If you’re a great wedding florist, even if you don’t offer wedding planning as a specific focussed service, there’s still so much planning involved in the flowers themselves. Every wedding and event florist has to do ‘planning’ to some degree, particularly if their design services are bespoke and tailored to each couple.
At Lime Tree Bower Florist, we pride ourselves in challenging the design status quo and never replicating the same design twice. Every event and wedding of ours is customised. Even if the colour scheme or theme are similar between two weddings, there are still differences in floral choices, the final design look etc.
We invest hours upon hours in emailing with you, to plan your wedding flowers to perfection. We gain a deep understanding of your style, colour and floral preferences, along with visual inspiration. We then capture all this on a planning page, and we keep this updated whenever something changes along the way. Changes happen frequently in the months between booking and the wedding itself, and we capture and process it all from our end. In fact, email chains with clients often stretch beyond 60-70+ on average!
Wedding flowers can seem expensive but that’s because you’re paying for more than just the flowers themselves. It’s also taking into account the behind the scenes planning, our floral expertise and attention to detail that’s involved from day one, all the way up to the day of the wedding.
2. How can quotes vary so much between wedding florists?
Being in a creative trade, the value that each designer or business places on their work varies across multiple factors. It’s no different to being an artist, a fashion designer or even a web designer - if you were to ask for quotes from several different people in these roles, you’d also receive a wide variety of quotes.
A good parallel example would be a wedding dress or suit. Depending on which brand you decide to buy from, it might be mass-produced, feature cheaper fabrics, and fairly simple designs. Compare this with a more bespoke or luxury brand with a more experienced designer who uses top grade materials, creates only made to measure outfits, and has a local team that sews it all by hand. Pricing for the same dress or suit between these two different brands would vary significantly, and you’d also have brands that fall in between the two of them.
Here are some of the key variables where the value will change between each wedding florist:
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Experience: someone who is just starting out might charge less as they’re trying to gain experience, vs someone who has years of experience.
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Labour rates & logistics: everyone values their time differently, i.e. someone might value their time to do something at $10/hr vs $50/h vs $100/h. Beyond the flowers, the rates for logistical elements such as delivery, set up and pack down labour and time, can also vary.
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Design style & assumptions: the choice of flowers and the style of an arrangement that someone has assumed may not be of the same quality or volume density as another florist. This can vary more significantly when it comes to bigger designs, such as ceiling installations.
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Markup: how much of a profit markup someone decides to put on their work as a business will evidently vary. Unfortunately, there are some businesses out there that significantly undercharge, with zero or very low markup, making their business unsustainable in the long run.
As you can see, when you take the sum of all the variables above, you’ll ultimately also receive quotes that vary between wedding florists!
3. Why don't wedding florists publish price lists?
Because every wedding we design is bespoke, a price list or package can't capture it. There are too many variables, and haggling over how many centimetres an arrangement changes by for a few dollars doesn't help anyone. Here's how we work instead:
Tell us about your day. Your date, venue, guest count and the floral moments you have in mind: personal flowers, ceremony, reception and installations.
We send a tailored range estimate. Based on your vision, venue and scope, so you know early whether it suits.
Then a detailed design proposal. Itemised pricing, floral recommendations and logistics specific to your venue. It's a starting point, and we refine scope and presentation with you.
We don't count out stems for each arrangement to set a price. If we did, most of our arrangements would look the same, and that's not our design aesthetic. Instead, we work back from your overall spend and use our experience of past weddings to see how it translates into arrangements and floral volume. Where it isn't realistic, we suggest design alternatives so as much of your vision as possible fits, without dropping our design standards.
Wedding flowers are a real investment, so we're always happy to explain what's behind a proposal: clear assumptions, and design alternatives if you need them.
Beyond pricing, we always recommend couples to choose vendors that they trust and connect with. It can often be just a gut feel. This is so important - it will make your wedding planning experience so much more enjoyable and stress free, and provides your vendors with the freedom to truly create magic on your day! See how we work as a wedding florist in Sydney, or browse our real weddings.
