How did you choose your florist?

After e-mailing 6 different ones and then them saying how much it cost. I decided to try another route. We’re getting our flowers from Sam’s Club.

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Does Sams Club do custom arrangements and centerpieces? I'm going to have to look there and Costco now I never thought of that, thanks!

View Quoted Comment We’ buying a wedding flowers collection. Everything comes together and I don’t have to put anything together. It’s crostini us about $900. I’ve included a picture to show what we all get.

Oh here’s what my bouquet of flowers look like. Maybe a little plain for some but it’s perfect for what we’re looking for. Plus they have other wedding collection to look at.

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Thank you so much! The convenience of it is great too, and simple is sometimes better, especially if you're not going really fancy or wanting to spend a whole lot of money, flowers can be so expensive it's shocking me!

I am a part of a very large (10k people) Facebook group for wedding vendors and brides in my region. The florist I booked was one that was consistently suggested to other brides when they posted about florists. I emailed her an idea of what we wanted and the price point that I wanted to spend and she broke down how much everything would cost. We ended up slightly more than budgeted (though when I set the budget for florals it was a blind stab at it since I hadn't priced wedding flowers before), but most of the things she's creating will have dual purpose (ceremony and then moved elsewhere for the reception).

My venue provided a list of preferred vendors - which included the florist. The florist in my area don’t disclose prices unless you go meet w/ them. So I used wedding wire to see which florists has the best average rate & then I met w/ the closest one.

View Quoted Comment My venue gave me a list too but lots of them are far from us example in the opposite direct from us to the venue so that’s exactly my problem is that they won’t disclose prices but so far away it would be a waste of time to meet if they are out of budget. I feel like many of them are completely making up the prices they put on wedding wire because there are 1000’s of dollars difference.

View Quoted Comment That sounds awesome to have a group where you can get real opinions of local vendors!

My venue recommended some, but they were pricey. I looked around the vendors on here (WW) and sent a couple emails and asked for pricing and what not. I didn't wanna spend a ton of money on something (not to be negative) that was eventually going to die. I went to visit my florist and knew when I walked in she'd do them. She was super reasonably priced and helped me find ways to actually SAVE money. I would just say ask around a ton, can't hurt.

View Quoted Comment I completely understand. It came down to 2x one was closer, one might have been cheaper - but they wanted me to come in & talk about flowers again (I tried to get them to bid on the flowers via the excel spreadsheet that the other florist did, but they wouldn’t). From what I could find, it wasn’t much cheaper (less than a $100) & they were far from the venue. So I got nervous that if they forgot some flowers in the morning it would really affect us. The place that we chose is like 15 mins away - so if something happened it could be addresses quickly.

My mother's friend is a florist as her second job/passion and she will be doing ours. Since it is not her main income she does them for a discounted price and it for perfectly with our budget. Maybe ask around and see if anyone knows someone you could contact.

I looked on WW and Yelp to see what was near my home or the venue. From there I verified reviews and looked at pictures of their works online to see if their style matched mine or not. That narrowed me down to two, one of them being who we chose. After a consultation meeting with each we made our choice.

I would recommend bringing along inspiration pictures. We did that and it turns out our florist did something similar so she's just going to replicate that for me. I would also recommend bringing your FH or a bridesmaid to help bounce ideas or to help get your point across if you're nervous.

When meeting with them, take a look at their shop if you can. A dingy shop means dingy flowers. The florist we didn't choose had some not so pretty flowers out for a wedding she was working on for the next weekend.

Also ask for referrals from your venue or other vendors.

Another route you could go is to have your max budget and some colors and let the shop have some creative control. This works if you're not super particular about the types of flowers, but can be a pretty easy way to keep costs under control and still have the colors you want!

We used a grocery store florist!