Budget Wedding Flowers-A Low Cost, Big Impact Idea

We have all seem the breathtaking, glossy pictures in the wedding magazines of churches, chapels and other wedding and reception venues dripping with flowers. While the pictures are certainly beautiful, in order to recreate the effect, you will need to spend a huge amount of money. With a little forethought and careful shopping your wedding venue can be breathtaking and beautiful using budget wedding flowers.

Most wedding budget planners advice you to allow 8 to 10% of your wedding budget for your flowers. This of course includes all the flowers for the wedding ceremony and the reception decorations as well as your bouquet and those for your attendants as well as the boutonnieres for male members of the wedding party. While 8-10% may not sound to bad, the reality is if you are not careful that percentage can soar well above even the 10%. So what is a budget minded bride to do?

One of the easiest ways to keep floral cost down is to keep the season in mind when choosing flowers. Flowers that are in season will always have a lower cost than flowers that are not in season. The same rule applies to types of flowers, more common flowers will be less costly than exotic flowers such as orchids. Another very easy way to make sure that your wedding flowers don’t blow your budget is to use lots of greenery instead of lots of floral stems. Greenery such as ferns and ivy can go a long way in filling up a space for little cost. Often times you can borrow ferns from friends and family and save even more.

Keeping with the seasonal flower idea, you might try buying pots of seasonal flowers from your local big box stores or other retailers. For instance if you are planning a December wedding, potted poinsettias are plentiful and cheap at Christmas time. You can wrap the pots with tulle or some other coordinating fabric and have a gorgeous, inexpensive display of flowers. Other readily available seasonal potted flowers are bulbs in the springtime (daffodils, tulips, hyacinths) or chrysanthemums and pansies in the fall. You could also use pots of greenery wrapped in tulle and perhaps tied with a bow in your wedding colors for another way to make a big statement with little cost.

These potted flowers can be used to decorate the ceremony location and then transported to the reception to decorate for even more savings. Of course you have to have people and vehicles available to move the flowers, so keep that in mind and plan accordingly.

Ask around, at local retailers to find what kind of potted flowers they regularly have in the season that you are planning for your wedding. You can then decide if one of them will fit with your chosen wedding colors and theme. You might also ask about a discount if you purchase several pots of flowers, you never know you might be able to save even more.

Another benefit of this budget wedding flowers idea is that you can plant the flowers in your yard and have a long lasting memento of your wedding.

For a free wedding budget calculator and lots more budget wedding ideas click here now.