This is a very tough question to answer! Depending on your preferences, needs, style, wedding location and guest count, your wedding flowers cost will vary. For a 50-100 guest-wedding, our A Timeless Celebration couples typically spend an average of $8000-12,000+ on their entire Montreal wedding flowers from ceremony altar arrangements, pew markers to bridal party bouquets, reception floral centerpieces to wedding cake flowers and statement pieces for their welcome or place card table. That’s a lot to remember and take into consideration when putting together your floral budget, right? Not to worry, we have compiled a complete list of all wedding flower items at the bottom of this article for you to download and help you with planning your wedding flowers in Montreal.

Our average bride’s wedding flower bouquet in Montreal ranges from $350 to $600 depending on the flowers, wedding style, and complexity. We always create the bride’s flower bouquet first before arranging other floral pieces so that we can choose the best and most beautiful flowers out of the bunch. We often use more variety and more premium flowers just for the bride’s bouquet and less variety for her bridesmaids’ bouquets. Of course, this is because the bride’s bouquet is the most important floral piece at the wedding!

A big part of your wedding flower budget goes towards the purchase of flowers. We only deal with the best flower wholesaler in Montreal who brings in the highest quality flowers with the best customer service. These flowers from our wholesaler are far better quality than what you would find at your local supermarkets as they’re grown especially to be used for events. We often have our clients and Montreal wedding planners come back to say that our flowers have lasted more than a week and even three or four weeks depending on how they have been arranged!

We place our floral orders in advance to avoid disappointment as much as possible. However, many factors do come into play from the local farms, or transportation/importation into Canada, to the weather, these factors are beyond our control and sometimes the desired flowers do not get to us. Flowers are flowers, they are perishable goods, sometimes they do arrive not exactly in the state we would like them to come. In this case, we have to replace them or find alternatives paying out of our pockets. These are also some of the reasons why we only work with a color palette for all weddings and not with specific flowers. We can give you an idea of the types of flowers we will be using but we do not promise specific flowers for your wedding.

Before we even receive your flowers from the flower wholesaler in Montreal, a few days in advance we prepare all your vessels, displays and decors to make sure they’re clean from previous use and in great condition for your wedding day.

When we receive the flowers from our floral supplier, we have to process them, take the leaves and thorns off, re-cut the stems, hydrate them and store them in our floral fridge so they can open appropriately and ready for our team to arrange them nicely for your wedding day. This whole process often takes two to three days before we deliver and setup for your wedding. Some floral designs and arrangements have to be arranged on the spot, which would also play into the cost of the wedding flowers and arrangements.

When it’s time for us to create your beautiful floral bouquets and arrangements, it takes time and patience. Once they are ready, our team takes care of transporting all the prettiness as safely as possible from our studio to your event locations. Depending on the complexity of your wedding flower design, bigger vehicles and more manpower might be needed to transport and setup everything for you. Once we arrive on location, we take care of setting up each arrangement and making sure they look absolutely gorgeous and picture-perfect for the camera and for all your guests to enjoy. The days and allotted time given by the wedding venues in Montreal will also play a factor in the cost of labour and how many staff we need to bring along to make everything happen on time for your guests’ arrival.

Once we deliver and setup your wedding, our job is not done yet! When your wedding is over, we return to the ceremony and wedding reception venues to clean up all that we have setup. We remove all the vessels and displays that you have rented from us to compliment your beautiful wedding flowers. We bring them back to our studio for cleaning, storage and ready for the next couple to enjoy.

We hope this gives you a better understanding of our flower preparation process and post-event processing. You might only see your wedding flowers for a few hours on your wedding day, but it actually takes a good few days to a week of preparations to make everything happen!

A false impression in regards to wedding flower costs we would also like to address is that often couples think that baby’s breath and greenery are inexpensive. While a stem of baby’s breath, for example, can be inexpensive to use as fillers in a bouquet you buy at the grocery store for your mom, can you imagine how many stems of baby’s breath you’d need to create a big dense ball of baby’s breath for your centerpieces? Some greenery such as salal can be inexpensive but some leaves such as eucalyptus actually cost a lot more than you would think.

Start by putting together a list of florists you would like to meet with and read reviews of these florist to ensure they are reliable and reputable. It’s a good idea to ask for referrals from friends who have already gotten married. Your vendors can also recommend other professional florists they know in the industry. Some decorators, such as ourselves, offer both décor and floral design services. It is a good idea to have one vendor take care of both so you don’t have too many vendors to deal with and the design can be cohesive. Once you have a list of good florists put together, narrow down to two or three top choices you really want to meet with or request an online proposal from. Some couples ask if it is absolutely necessary for them to meet us in person or if we can work on their wedding design through email, especially for couples who are not from Montreal. The truth is that we book 75% of our couples through email exchanges and telephone conversations and we don’t see them until they’re in their beautiful wedding gowns and handsome suits! Often these couples hire us from outside of the province or country, Montreal is their destination wedding. We don’t think it is absolutely necessary to meet face-to-face (or even a video conference would do the trick) as long as you click with your florist, you would know right away through a couple of email exchanges or phone chat if they’re a right fit for you or not.

For the design process, each florist works differently. At A Timeless Celebration, we typically have our couples fill out a detailed form so we can collect all the necessary information and pictures needed to determine if we are available on your wedding day. Should we still be available for your wedding, we will put together a proposal with your wish list of flower and decor items you want to have for your wedding. This wish list may exceed your desired budget, but we will then discuss what is most important to you, what is it that you really want to have and we work on your wish list together to settle on a design and budget you’re most comfortable with. During the design process, couples may even request a consultation and design session at their wedding venue. Bonus tip: if you’re still looking for your perfect venue to host your wedding, we’ve a list of beautiful wedding venues in Montreal on our blog to help you out!

Our couples typically book us a year, even two years in advance. But of course, if we’re still available on your wedding day, we can accommodate and help you with your wedding floral and décor designs at any stage during your wedding planning process. The quickest we’ve pulled together a wedding is 4 days! Our advice is to book a florist at the early stages of your wedding planning process because of the following reasons:

• Wedding flowers can be a big chunk of your wedding budget so you would not want any surprises.

• Professional wedding florists take on only a certain number of weddings and events a year in order to keep up with high their high quality of services and attention they give their couples and clients. If you love the work of a particular florist, book them early to avoid disappointment.

• Just another big item checked off your to-do list! The closer you get to your wedding, the more details will come up that you haven’t thought about before, you would not want to be worrying about hunting down a good florist who is still available for your wedding one month prior to your big day. Although sometimes we do have situations like that, we try to accommodate the best we can.

When you reach out to a wedding florist, it is important to do some research on them beforehand so you’re not wasting your time. Often from their website portfolio and online reviews, you can easily tell how much experiences they have in the wedding industry. Here are some important questions to ask a wedding florist when deciding who to hire if you cannot seem to easily find the answer on their website:

• What is your floral style?
• Do you have a portfolio of weddings / events you have previously designed?
• Have you done similar style as what we want our wedding to look like?
• How many weddings do you take on a year?
• Do you have other weddings booked on my wedding weekend?
• Do you have other services such as rentals to compliment our flowers?
• What is the reservation process?
• Do you require a signed contract?
• Do you require a deposit and how much?
• What is your cancellation policy?

Popular wedding flowers in Montreal depend on the season, style, the look and feel you’re going for. For an organic, natural and garden style wedding (which is our fave!), the most popular flowers we use are roses, spray roses, lisianthus, scabiosas, carnations, ranunculus, tulips, peonies, dahlias, sweet peas, anemones and succulents. We also use a variety of greenery, especially different types of eucalyptus leaves (silver dollar, seeded eucalyptus, parvifolia eucalyptus, etc). If you’re looking for a rustic style wedding, the most popular flowers we use are hydrangeas, double stocks, roses, daisies, baby’s breath and of course, mason jars, wood slabs, burlaps and laces to compliment the flowers and to add that rustic touch to them. For a luxury, modern venue wedding style, lots of hydrangeas and roses, calla lilies, orchids, carnations and dahlias are used to create those massive flower balls and arrangements paired with lots of candle lights.

We know that planning a wedding is not an easy task, there are so many things to think about, it’s easy to forget the little details for your Big Day. We’ve created a flower checklist to help you, to make it easier and as stress-free as possible during this design process. You can download our Wedding Flower Checklist here on our blog.