How to Brief a Wedding Florist When You Do Not Know Any Flower Names

Most couples arrive at a florist consultation with a folder of saved images and a quiet worry that they are about to be asked a question they cannot answer.

You do not need the vocabulary. Florists translate for a living. What you do need is to be specific about four things, because those four are what a quote is actually built from.

The four things a florist needs from you

1. The list. Not the look — the count. Bouquets and how many. Buttonholes. Ceremony pieces. Table centrepieces and how many tables. Anything installed: an arch, a hanging piece, a staircase, an entrance. This is the skeleton of the quote and everything else is a multiplier on it.

2. The room and the light. A photograph of the actual venue, ideally at the time of day you will be in it, is worth more than fifty inspiration images. Ceiling height, wall colour, window light and table shape change what will work more than flower choice does.

3. Three words. The same three words you should be giving every vendor. "Loose, green, unfussy." "Structured, dark, dramatic." "Soft, pale, romantic." A florist can work from three honest adjectives. They cannot work from twenty images that contradict each other.

4. The number. Give them a real budget. Florists are not trying to spend all of it — they are trying to solve the shape of your day within it, and a florist working blind will either overshoot and embarrass you both, or undershoot and give you less than you wanted.

How to use inspiration images well

Save what you like, then annotate each one with the single thing you actually like about it. "This colour." "This shape." "The way it is low enough to talk across."

Twenty unannotated images say "I like flowers". Five annotated ones say what to build. It is also the fastest way to discover that everything you saved has the same three colours in it, which is genuinely useful information.

What actually drives the price

• Volume of stems. Fullness costs more than rarity, most of the time. A generous loose arrangement of common seasonal flowers can cost more than a small tight one of unusual ones.
• Season. In-season and locally available is cheaper and, on the day, in better condition. Ask what is at its best in your month and let that lead.
• Labour. Wiring, hand-tying, and anything installed is time. Installations also mean a bigger team, a ladder, a longer setup window and often a strike at midnight.
• Structures and hardware. Arches, stands, vessels and mechanics may be rented, and rented things have delivery, collection and damage terms.
• Movement. Repurposing ceremony flowers into the reception saves money and costs labour — someone has to move them during cocktail hour. Ask whether that is included.

Questions worth asking

• What is in season and at its best in our month?
• Given our list and our budget, where would you spend it and where would you save?
• Are vessels rented or ours to keep? Who collects them, and when?
• Do you install and strike, and are both in the quote?
• What is your substitution policy if a flower is not available or arrives in poor condition?
• How many weddings do you take on our date?
• Who will be on site on the day?
• What is your deposit, payment schedule and cancellation policy?

The substitution question is the important one. Flowers are agricultural, markets vary week to week, and any florist promising an exact stem eighteen months out is promising something they do not control. What you want is a florist who will say: here is the palette and the feel, and here is how I protect it if a specific flower is not right that week.

The trade-off nobody mentions early enough

Ask what proportion of the quote is going into pieces that exist for a few minutes versus pieces that live in the room all evening. Ceremony installations are photographed heavily and seen briefly; table flowers are in front of your guests for hours.

There is no right answer. There is a decision, and it is much easier to make it deliberately at the quoting stage than to discover it on the invoice.

Florists working in each market are listed with the starting price they have published — florists in Seattle, for instance. To see where flowers sit against the rest before you have a quote, the budget calculator works in the browser with no signup.