Buying Flowers by the Bunch vs. Hiring a Florist for Your Wedding or Event

When planning flowers for a wedding, celebration, corporate event or other special occasion, there are several ways to approach the florals. You can purchase fresh flowers and greenery by the bunch and create everything yourself, you can hire a professional florist to take care of the entire project, or you can choose artificial flowers, commonly called silks, either purchasing or renting them for your event. Each approach has advantages, and the right choice depends on your budget, expectations, available time and, perhaps most importantly, how much of the project you actually want to take on yourself.

At The BloomBox, we're happy to provide fresh flowers by the bunch for customers who want to create their own arrangements. We also provide complete professional floral design for weddings and events. While the flowers themselves may come from exactly the same suppliers, these are two very different services, and it's important to understand what is—and isn't—included with each.

Buying Fresh Flowers by the Bunch

If you enjoy working with flowers, have some experience arranging them, or have friends and family eager to help, creating your own wedding or event flowers can be a rewarding part of the experience. We're happy to order fresh flowers and greenery for you by the bunch so you can create your own bouquets, centrepieces, bud vases and other arrangements.

One distinction is important, however: The BloomBox is a retail florist, not a discount or wholesale flower supplier. We don't maintain a separate inventory of inexpensive flowers specifically for large-volume sales. The flowers available to our DIY customers come through the same professional suppliers we use for our own designs. Purchasing several bunches doesn't turn the order into a wholesale purchase or necessarily result in a substantially lower price per stem.

There is also an important difference in how flowers purchased by the bunch are handled compared with flowers we're using for our own designs.

For bunch orders, we do minimal processing. We cut the stems and place the flowers into water until you're ready to pick them up. That's generally it. We don't typically remove all of the packaging, individually inspect every stem beyond what can reasonably be seen while the flowers remain packaged, remove damaged or dead foliage, clean individual stems or completely process the product for you.

That work becomes part of your project.

Processing Flowers Is More Important Than It May Seem

When we're creating a wedding or event ourselves, every flower goes through our normal processing routine before it reaches the design bench. Flowers are unpacked and inspected, foliage is removed where appropriate, stems are cleaned and recut, and the flowers are properly conditioned and hydrated. During that process we occasionally discover problems that weren't visible when the flowers first arrived.

Fresh flowers are a product of Mother Nature, and they're also shipped considerable distances before reaching us. Hidden damage, broken stems, poor-quality foliage, mould or other issues can sometimes be concealed inside a bunch. When we're providing the complete floral design service, identifying and dealing with those issues is our responsibility. If something doesn't meet our standards and needs to be replaced, we take care of it as part of producing the finished event.

When you purchase flowers by the bunch, that responsibility becomes yours. That's one of the reasons the price of flowers by the bunch shouldn't be directly compared with the price of finished professional floral work. You're purchasing the flowers, but you're also choosing to take on much of the labour, quality control and risk that we would normally handle for you.

We also don't typically recommend stem counts for DIY projects. If we're not designing the finished pieces, we can't accurately know how many stems you'll require. Your intended design, the size of your bouquets or centrepieces, your design style and your level of experience can all dramatically affect the number of flowers needed. Someone who works with flowers every day may be able to create a particular look with a very different number of stems than someone creating their first bouquet. Breakage and mistakes also need to be considered. Because it isn't our design, estimating how much product you personally will need is ultimately part of planning your DIY project.

Don't Underestimate How Much Time DIY Flowers Take

This may be the most important consideration for anyone thinking about creating their own wedding flowers: leave yourself far more time than you think you'll need.

What we would consider an average-sized wedding—perhaps a bridal bouquet, two to four bridesmaid bouquets and two to four boutonnieres—can easily require six to eight hours of design time for our professional designers. That doesn't include the time spent beforehand receiving, unpacking, processing and conditioning the flowers.

We do this professionally.

For someone who doesn't work with flowers every day, the same project can take considerably longer. You need time to learn as you go, make decisions, correct things you aren't happy with, deal with broken stems and figure out techniques that a professional designer performs almost automatically.

This is especially important for a bride who intends to create her own bouquets. The days immediately before a wedding are already incredibly busy. Family and friends are arriving, the venue may need decorating, rehearsals and appointments are happening, last-minute details need attention and seemingly small jobs have a habit of taking much longer than expected. Adding many hours of floral processing and design to that schedule can turn what sounded like a fun DIY project months earlier into an enormous amount of pressure at exactly the wrong time.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. If arranging flowers is something you genuinely enjoy and you want that experience to be part of your wedding, it can be wonderful. Just make sure you've allowed plenty of time, have a suitable workspace and have realistic expectations about how much work is involved.

What Changes When You Hire Us for the Project?

When you hire The BloomBox to design the flowers for your wedding or event, you're not simply paying us to take the same bunches of flowers and put them into bouquets. You're hiring us to take responsibility for the floral project.

That begins with planning. We work with you to determine the overall look you're trying to achieve and select flowers that make sense for the design, season, colour palette and budget. We calculate quantities based on what we're creating, order the product, receive and process it, assess its quality and make adjustments when Mother Nature or the supply chain doesn't cooperate.

Flowers don't always arrive exactly as expected. A particular variety can suddenly become unavailable. A colour can be different from what we anticipated. Flowers can be damaged in transit, arrive too open, refuse to open quickly enough or simply fail to meet our standards. When you've hired us to create your wedding or event flowers, those become our problems to solve rather than yours.

Much of professional floral design is actually this invisible work. Ideally, you never know there was a problem. You simply see the finished bouquets and arrangements.

Our designers also understand how different flowers behave, how much product is likely to be required to achieve a particular look, how flowers need to be handled and what can be substituted without losing the character of the original design. We're not trying to reproduce something mechanically stem for stem. We're creating a finished design, and that experience and judgment are part of what you're hiring.

What About Artificial or Silk Flowers?

Artificial flowers are another option worth considering, and for some weddings and events they can make a lot of sense. They can be purchased well in advance, there are no concerns about hydration or refrigeration, and you aren't depending on seasonal availability. Budget-friendly artificial flowers are also readily available and can make them an economical choice, particularly when used creatively.

High-quality artificial flowers are a different story. The best silks available today can be remarkably realistic, but the ones that convincingly imitate premium fresh flowers are often not inexpensive. In some cases, a high-quality artificial stem can cost as much as—or even more than—the fresh flower it's designed to imitate. Artificial flowers can certainly be a budget-friendly option, but it's important not to assume that artificial flowers that look indistinguishable from fresh ones will automatically cost less.

Renting artificial floral arrangements is another possibility. It eliminates the need to purchase flowers that you may have little use for after the event and can make larger installations more accessible. There are compromises, though. Rental arrangements are, by their nature, designed to be used repeatedly. The same flowers and designs may appear at many different weddings and events, and artificial flowers also experience wear through repeated handling, transportation, setup and takedown.

For some people, that's a perfectly reasonable trade-off.

For others, part of what they want from their wedding flowers is something that feels specifically like their wedding.

One of the Wonderful Things About Fresh Flowers Is That They Are Never Exactly the Same

This is something that's easy to overlook when comparing fresh and artificial flowers.

We could design flowers for two weddings using exactly the same varieties, the same colours and even the same number of stems, and the finished pieces could still be completely unique.

One rose may curve slightly to the left while another stands perfectly straight. One bloom opens wider than the next. Greenery bends and twists differently. Individual flowers vary slightly in size, colour and shape. Mother Nature gives us the ingredients, and our designers respond to what is actually sitting on the design bench rather than assembling identical manufactured components according to a fixed pattern.

That's part of what makes professional floral design creative.

Your bouquet isn't pulled from a shelf, and it wasn't used at someone else's wedding last weekend. It's created for you, from fresh flowers that are themselves individual, by a designer making decisions specifically for your event.

Even if another couple chooses the exact same flowers, theirs won't be yours.

So Which Option Is Right for You?

There's no single answer. Buying flowers by the bunch can be a wonderful option for someone who genuinely wants to create their own florals, has enough time to do the work and is comfortable taking responsibility for processing, quality control, quantities, design, storage and transportation. We're happy to provide beautiful fresh flowers for those projects.

Artificial flowers can also make sense, particularly when advance preparation, durability or rental availability are priorities. There are excellent products available at many price points, although achieving the appearance of truly fresh flowers with premium silks may not provide the savings people sometimes expect.

Hiring a professional florist is a different proposition. You're not simply purchasing stems. You're hiring someone to plan, source, process, inspect, design, troubleshoot and ultimately take responsibility for that part of your event.

For many couples, one of the greatest benefits is simply knowing they don't have to think about it.

When the wedding is only a day or two away, you can be spending those hours with the people who came to celebrate with you rather than standing over buckets of flowers wondering whether you've bought enough roses.

Whether you'd like us to supply the flowers and let you take it from there, or you'd rather hand the entire floral project over to our designers, we're happy to talk about what you're planning and which approach makes the most sense for you.

Fresh. Unique. Flowers. It's What We Do!