One of the most commonly asked questions we answer at Kate Hill Flowers is 'when should I start planning my wedding flowers?', so I thought I would share a little bit of advice on the subject.
At both ends of the spectrum, we have brides approach us as soon as they become engaged, while we also have brides approach us late as a couple of months prior to their spring or summer wedding, which is obviously peak wedding season and leaving it very late!
The best advice I can give to brides looking at having a Spring or Summer wedding is to start planning your wedding flowers as early as possible. This really means as soon as you have a good idea of your dress style and have booked your venue as these play a key role in the creative direction for your flowers. As a rule of thumb, 6-8 months is about as late as you really want to leave it if you would like to have peace of mind that you will have a top supplier designing beautiful flowers for your wedding day.
So how do we know when we are fully booked? Well, this is both an art and a science. Hopefully more science than art as for a full service florist it is really about managing safe and efficient logistics, but it's where most florists come unstuck. Which is understandable as florists are almost always creative, left brained people (and it's why we have a right brained person with a project management background do this for us!). We always find it entertaining to hear other florists boast of doing this many or that many weddings on the one day. The truth is that it doesn't really mean anything for a florist to throw a big number out there to impress you (other than they are a little insecure), as it's the scope of each wedding that really counts. One big wedding can be ten bridal flower jobs, for example. You, the customer, can never really know.
It is also worth noting that Winter weddings are becoming more popular. We have literally seen Winter wedding bookings double every year for the last few years. We feel that a couple of the main contributing factors to this is that couples are leaving the booking of their chosen venue too late, or on the other hand discovering the charms of a certain venue in winter, such as some of the beautiful venues in the Yarra Valley. Taking the example of a destination wedding in the Yarra Valley, the costs that may have once been inhibitive in Summer (such as supplier logistics and accommodation) may in fact taper off with the lower costs for booking the venue in the low season. This is definitely worth putting some thought into as there are also many beautiful blooms available in Winter.
So to summarise, if you have your gown or a good idea of it's style, have booked your venue and understand that flowers make all the difference between just another wedding and truly memorable wedding for both you and your guests, there really should be nothing in the way of you sitting down with a florist today to discuss your wedding in more detail.
I hope this sheds a little more light on the timings of your floral planning process and please feel more than welcome to contact us anytime if you have any questions at all.
x Kate
