Planning Your Wedding Blooms: Essential Floral Advice for Newly Engaged Couples
Essence
If you’re wondering where to start when it comes to choosing wedding flowers for your wedding day, start here: essence! My biggest piece of advice as a Brisbane wedding florist would be to focus on the overall aesthetic and emotional feeling you’d really like to create for your day. Infusing your shared identity as a couple into the floral design elements for your day. Avoid getting hung up on specific flower types or even specific colour schemes in the first instance.
How do you want your day to feel for you and your guests? Is it romantic and ethereal? Whimsical & Playful? Earthy and Untamed? Allow those guiding emotions to be your starting point, shaping a day that is a true reflection of your unique love story.
Take, for instance, one couple planning their wedding florals. They envisioned an aesthetic that perfectly complemented their historic and heritage-listed venue, The Courthouse Restaurant. With its rich history, timeless architecture, and stunning Moreton Bay views, their charming ceremony setting under a classical sandstone gazebo called for a 'vibe' that was nothing less than timeless elegance, soft romance, and classic beauty.
For the ceremony, lush arrangements of soft white and pale pink blooms, paired with abundant fresh greenery, were designed to gracefully embrace the classical pillars of the gazebo. The rich foliage created a beautiful contrast against the stone, while the full, romantic flowers added softness and a sense of celebratory abundance.
The bride's bridal bouquet mirrored this vision perfectly – a beautifully composed blend of blush and white roses, fragrant white stock, and touches of silvery-green eucalyptus. It was designed to feel classic yet natural, flowing gently, and providing a harmonious extension of the elegant atmosphere created at their ceremony. We focused on creating a cohesive feeling that would enhance the historic charm of The Courthouse ensuring their wedding floral design added a delicate, dreamy touch to share the couple's personal romantic story.
Allow those guiding emotions to be your starting point, shaping a day that is a true reflection of your unique love story. When the celebrations are over, what cherished memories of your wedding day will you hold onto, knowing they truly reflected who you are as a couple?
Collaboration
Once you're clear on the aesthetic for your day, searching for a florist that is the right creative partner for you becomes the next key step. Be prepared to share your ideas and provide key initial details about the overall style and concept for your day. Crucially, factor in your chosen venue and the unique spaces your florist will be working in; sharing details like floor plans, photos, and any mood boards or imagery you've gathered is incredibly useful. It is also extremely helpful to share timelines and any setup requirements between florist and venue, as well as discussing design inspiration with other key vendors such as the photographer and planner. This is helpful for many reasons; your planner may often be the person liaising with your florist and ensuring that the design vision is brought to life. Whilst your photographer will be the one capturing all the beautiful details that you’ve painstakingly chosen, don’t allow these details be overlooked, they can make such beautiful images to look back on; like a flower girls sweet posy, or delicate hair florals to a carefully curated welcome table and accompanying floral design.
Often this may start out a little scattered and that’s okay, trust your florist to hone in on the true essence of what you want to achieve for your day. Communicate what you love and really want to express. This might mean taking key elements for your images to create something truly unique to you, translating your personalities as a couple onto a floral canvas. While we strive to provide a clear understanding of our custom wedding floral design concepts through similar images, sketches, and detailed descriptions, an exact photographic match may not always exist. This is where trusting your chosen vendor and aligning on the overall vision truly comes in. Be open to suggestions based on seasonal availability, locally sourced flowers and the freshest and most stunning options for the time of year. If you have specific flowers in mind for sentimental reasons, or that you deeply align with, bear in mind that some flowers have very specific seasonal windows. If you care deeply about choosing a sustainable wedding florist that focuses on sustainability, and foam free designs then factor this in early on in your conversations as well as any other details that are important to include.
Sustainability is an important part of my personal ethos, representing a journey that I am dedicated to improving with every event I collaborate on. This commitment means actively reducing reliance on single-use plastics like floral foam and excessive packaging. Instead, I prioritise sustainable mechanics for my designs – think reusable vessels, chicken wire, kenzans, and other natural structures that are either biodegradable or can be used again and again. Alongside this, I also focus on minimising my use of imported flowers from outside Australia.
For me, the most impactful collaborations truly flourish when a couple's preferences and values genuinely align with this ethos. It's in this shared understanding that we can create something truly beautiful and meaningful together, where every bloom tells a story of both your love and our shared creative vision.
The B Word
Please, please be upfront and transparent about your wedding flower budget. Your florist cannot produce Dior campaign worthy florals on a Temu budget no matter how talented they are. If you are open and communicate this from the beginning, they can work in collaboration with you to fine tune your ideas to best accommodate you and make suggestions such as focusing on key impact pieces for maximum wow.
Some florists will have a minimum spend; this is for good reason. Our hearts and souls are poured into creating the perfect ambiance for your incredibly special day. This means hours, days, and even weeks of thought and care are dedicated to making your dream florals a reality. These costs equate to a plethora of things impacting wedding flower prices: extensive consultation, specialised skill and expertise, wholesale costs and sourcing, operational overheads, logistical costs, delivery and onsite labour and set up costs, ensuring quality and impact, this can be a challenge to achieve on a smaller budget. If you do have budget constraints, sharing with your florist will allow them to focus on creating strong focal points.
No florist expects that everyone will understand costs from the beginning, but when you pay for a meal at a high-end restaurant would you demand to see a breakdown of the cost of materials and logistical costs for those items? This is what florists often face, when in reality their mark-ups are far less than in many other industries.
Step by step
Once you’re aligned and clear on the vision for your wedding day, the next step is refining all the details from breakdowns of personal flowers for the wedding party, to the ceremony space, reception area and any other additional décor or hire elements required. This can be presented to you with some key visuals, a finalised colour scheme and finer details such as ribbon finishes as well as a finalised fee proposal. Logistical information, key timings, on the day contacts and addresses should also be outlined. This level of detail forms part of your custom wedding flower package.
Once your florist is secured for your date with a deposit and contract, the difficult part is done. It’s advised that you contact a wedding florist between 6-12 months before your wedding date to avoid missing out and allowing plenty of time for the design and planning process. In the months following your booking, your contract will clearly outline what changes you're able to make. If you're ever unsure, open communication with your florist is always best. Often small additions such as extra personal flowers can be made, major design changes would often have a significant impact on time and resources required. Most wholesale floral suppliers require at least a four-week lead time for special orders such as wedding flowers, so a check in usually takes place at least six to eight weeks out to finalise the florals before orders are finalised.
‘Alfred’ took out the flower field
What happens if a cyclone wipes out the local supplier’s flower fields leaving your florist scrambling to source substitutions? If your floral designer has outlined specific suggested florals, in most cases florists will have a clause in their contracts which explains that substitutions may be required in cases of weather, quality or supply issues. As your wedding floral designer, I like to communicate this as early as I can. Returning to ‘collaboration’ is key, trusting your florist to provide substitutions of a similar style and value where necessary. If you’ve entrusted your florist to make the floral choices, leaving it open to creative interpretation means that each carefully curated bloom will be a delightful surprise on the day of your wedding.
Your Flowers: Happily Ever After
The celebrations are coming to an end, the drunken uncle has slumped into his Uber ride home, and the last song for the evening is playing; what happens to all those gorgeous blooms?
There are a variety of possibilities. Firstly, aside from hire items, arbour frames etc, the fresh florals are yours to keep. There are factors to consider such as your vendors’ event schedule, and any ‘bump-out’ times they may require in their contract. If you do want your florist to return and remove or dismantle installations this is calculated as an additional cost of service. This can sometimes mean florists are required to return in the ‘wee small hours.’ If this is not a requirement, often flowers can be gifted to guests, which they can simply take home with them (as long as no hire items are accidently taken too), more so in lots of fun and unique ways such as a posy station which could be discussed and quoted by your florist, dismantling ceremony designs and wrapping them up into sweet posy’s for guests to leave with. It is also an option to pre-arrange donations of fresh floral arrangements to charitable causes or aged care facilities so they can continue to be appreciated. For smaller personal flowers such as bouquets, there are so many incredibly creative options for preserving them. They can be skillfully preserved and framed, or set in resin, other creatives offer embroidered designs or paintings of your bridal bouquet! I personally love the idea of snuggling up with a hand embroidered cushion with my bouquet on it.
Have more questions about wedding florals in Brisbane? Get in touch with us – we'd love to help!
The AI Wrap Up.
Your Wedding Floral Checklist
Essence & Style
Define the feeling or mood you want to create (e.g. romantic, playful, earthy)
Focus on the overall aesthetic before narrowing down flower types or colours
Use your venue, personal story, and season as inspiration
Collaboration & Planning
Choose a florist who resonates with your vision
Share your:
Mood board or inspiration images
Venue photos and floor plan
Key timings (e.g. ceremony, setup)
Other vendor details (especially planner & photographer)
Be open to seasonal and local flower suggestions
Let your florist know if:
You have sentimental flower choices
Sustainability and foam-free design are important to you
Budget Conversations
Be upfront about your floral budget
Ask if there’s a minimum spend
Let your florist recommend “wow-factor” pieces within your budget
Understand that costs reflect expertise, labour, logistics, and impact
Finalising Details
Confirm:
Breakdown of bouquets, ceremony florals, reception, extras
Colour palette and finishing details (e.g. ribbons)
Setup/delivery/bump-out timings and logistics
Final price and deposit terms
Book your florist 6–12 months in advance
Check your florists deadline for finalising any minor changes (often 6–8 weeks out)
Read your contract for what's flexible and what’s locked in
Flower Contingencies
Understand substitution clauses in case of weather/supply issues
Be open to creative floral swaps in similar style and value
After the Wedding
Decide:
Do you want to keep or gift the flowers?
Do you need the florist to return for pack-down?
Do you want to donate flowers to charity or care homes?
Do you want your bouquet preserved (resin, framed, embroidered etc.)?
