Four weddings in a week
It is June. This weekend you have a Friday wedding with pastel garden roses, a Saturday wedding with white and green, another Saturday wedding in bright colours and a Sunday wedding with dried flowers and pampas.
On Monday, you sit with the four quotes and work out what to buy from the wholesaler: how many stems of each rose, how much eucalyptus, how many bunches of gypsophila, how much ribbon, how many oasis bricks, and which vases and stands need to come out of storage.
Adding it up by hand takes a morning, and a mistake means either rushing to the wholesaler on Thursday or buying far too much.
Why wedding weeks are hard to buy for
Each wedding's quote lists items, not stems. The number of stems per item is in your head, or in a note you made at the consultation. Turning items into stems means counting again for every wedding.
Couples change their minds after booking: extra buttonholes, fewer tables, a colour switch. The final numbers may be in an email thread, not in the original quote.
Weekly totals across weddings also matter. Buying for four weddings at once can be cheaper and simpler, but only if you know the combined total.
What hand-counted orders cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Stems counted by hand from quotes | Mornings lost every wedding week |
| Late changes not included | Short of flowers or items on the day |
| Weddings bought separately | More wholesaler runs and fewer combined orders |
| Sundries forgotten | Last-minute trips for ribbon or mechanics |
| Hire items not checked | Two weddings needing the same stands |
Wedding flowers must be right on the day. A shortfall on Saturday morning is not something you can fix with a substitution most couples will accept.
Over-buying has its own cost. Stems bought as a safety margin for four weddings, then not used, go into the shop buckets on Monday and have a few days to sell before they are waste. Some florists can absorb that through the shop; others cannot, and either way it is better to buy a margin deliberately than by accident.
Wedding weeks also clash with everyday trade. The same wholesaler order covers the shop's buckets, contract work and any funerals that week, and the weddings take priority when stock is tight. Without the wedding totals in front of you, it is easy to under-order for the shop, then find on Friday that the stems for the Saturday walk-ins were used for table centres.
How we build a weekly wedding flower list
- Each confirmed wedding holds its final item list, updated whenever the couple changes something, with the change logged.
- Each item has a recipe of stems, foliage, sundries and hire items, set up from your own designs.
- Every week, the system multiplies items by recipes across all that week's weddings and gives one combined stem list, grouped by variety and colour.
- Sundries (ribbons, pins, mechanics, foam or foam-free alternatives) and hire items are listed too, with hire items checked against other bookings for clashes.
- The list can be sent to your wholesaler as an order, or used as a checklist when buying at the market.
- Each wedding also gets its own prep sheet showing exactly what to make, with the recipes, for the workroom.
Your recipes stay your own. We set them up with you and you can change them as your designs change.
Changes after booking are the part most worth recording. When a couple adds two buttonholes by email, the change is made on the wedding and logged with the date, so the weekly list and the prep sheet both pick it up.
A Monday that takes minutes
On Monday, you open the week and the list is ready. You check it, adjust for any flowers you know will be short, and send the order. The workroom has prep sheets for each wedding.
- One combined flower list for each wedding week
- Late changes included automatically
- Sundries and hire items listed with the flowers
- Prep sheets for each wedding's items
Does your wedding buying look like this?
- You count stems for each wedding by hand from the quote.
- Late changes from couples are in emails.
- Each wedding is bought separately.
- You have run short of flowers or sundries on a wedding day.
- Hire items have been double-booked.