The Myth of the “Wedding Tax”

Have you ever heard that florists charge more once they hear the word “wedding”? I have no idea where this myth started (probably some internet article published 15 years ago), but it has taken root in the cultural consciousness of lots of folks getting married, so we wanted to dispel it here.

Here’s why it’s not true:

Flowers have a standard, industry-wide markup. Why the markup to begin with? Well, when we purchase our flowers at wholesale cost from farms or suppliers, they come to us tied in market bunches with leaves on, often covered in dirt (or even bugs!), and generally not design-ready. We transport these flowers back to our studio, cold-store them, then process them. That means we strip the leaves and extra lateral branches we’re not going to use, we clean the stems, remove any pods (looking at you, poppies), slice open the stems for better hydration (looking at you, hellebores), and prep them for design. Once our blooms are design ready, our team gets to work carefully placing each flower where it needs to go to make floral magic.

Let me let you in on a little secret: retail floristry and wedding floristry use exactly the same markup. How do we know this? Because here at Stems Brooklyn, we have both a retail shop and a weddings department.

Why would we charge more for a wedding than for retail arrangements? We’re doing the same work to condition, process, and design with the flowers. And when it comes to designing, pricing flowers is just math. If tulips retail at $6 per stem, and we put 8 tulips in an arrangement, the arrangement is priced at $48. Easy!

The only difference is that, for a full-service wedding, you may need on-site set-up and breakdown services, which we of course charge for as a percentage of your flower subtotal. The flowers themselves, however, are priced the same.

So next time someone tells you, “just say you’re having an engagement party or a family reunion!” to save money on flowers, just know that when you come to us, our flowers are priced transparently across the board. No wedding tax, no surprises. Happy planning!

Our #1 Tip for Hiring a Wedding Florist

If there’s one tip we can give to clients who are beginning the journey of finding a floral designer for their weddings, it would be this: hire a florist who does not use floral foam.

What is floral foam, you may be wondering? Sold everywhere from craft stores to wholesale suppliers, these recognizable green bricks are used by florists to soak in water and then used as a base for their flowers, holding everything in place and hydrating the stems throughout a wedding day.

https://www.sustainablefloristry.org/resources/floral-foam-facts/

But WHY wouldn’t we want to use that!? It kind of sounds amazing!?

Well, it’s not. Here’s why. Floral foam contains two chemicals considered toxic to humans: phenol and formaldehyde. These are carcinogenic and can even cause cancer after prolonged exposure. Not only are the florists who handle these blocks of foam at risk, but the animals who ingest these harmful microplastics once they’re dissolved into water sources are in danger as well.

Not good- and totally against our ethos here at Stems Brooklyn; we want to support and draw inspiration from the earth, not work against it.

Luckily, there are tons of foam free alternatives out there, and our studio employs many of these techniques!

Look, it’s a reality that heat + direct sun = a disaster for flowers. When we’re designing a lush floral chuppah outside in the July heat, it’s imperative that our flowers have some kind of hydration source, lest they wilt before the ceremony even starts! Here are some alternatives we’ve found to be stellar for us:

1. Water cups.
So simple, so easy. Cups (and you can buy these from a wholesale supplier OR use something as simple as a cut-open water bottle) can be attached to your ceremony mechanics and filled with water to provide a handy hydration source for flowers.

Larisa Shorina Photography

2. Chicken wire.
Found in your everyday hardware store, chicken wire makes a great matrix for stuffing into vessels and providing a structure for flowers to be inserted into, allowing your florist to obtain every angle necessary for the design. We also attach chicken wire to installation mechanics, and will often pair it with cups for extra support!

This mechanic featured chicken wire wrapped around blocks of Agrawool, a biodegradable alternative to floral foam. We’ve stopped using Agrawool because it makes us itchy!

3. Moss.
Moss, soaked overnight or even for a few hours, makes a great sustainable alternative to floral foam. We like to roll up moss into a “sausage” shape, then tape it or chicken wire it into a vessel, and voila! Stems are ready to go in and get hydrated.

A long & low centerpiece designed using moss & chicken wire in a reusable dish.

Ultimately, designing without floral foam is a bit harder and requires some thinking outside of the box, but we believe it’s worth it to avoid these dangerous chemicals. If you’re planning your wedding, make sure your big day isn’t tainted by toxic microplastics- opt for a florist who will work diligently to find amazing, foam-free solutions!

Our Favorite Fall Flower: The Cafe Au Lait Dahlia

For our inaugural blog post (!!), we wanted to share one of our absolute favorite flowers to use in weddings, the queen herself: the Cafe au Lait dahlia.

Photo by Forged in the North.

Cafe Au Lait dahlias are truly a testament to the insane beauty of flowers, sporting long, tissue paper-thin petals swirling out from a deep yellow center. One of their most amazing qualities is that their shade can range from creamy warm buttery yellow to a cool, almost lavender tone, depending on the grower and the time of year they were harvested.

Peep the top dahlia on this cake design- a cooler-toned Cafe Au Lait that worked perfectly for this palette.

Photo by Larisa Shorina Photography.

Now, you’ve probably seen these stunners all over Instagram and Pinterest; we certainly see them in our clients’ mood boards all the time. But did you know that these are ONLY available in our region in late summer/early autumn? That means if you’re getting married in August, September, or October, these babes may make a feature in your wedding designs!

Photo by Forged in the North.

Part of the appeal of this dahlia is its ephemeral nature. What’s so challenging about this particular variety of dahlia is its shelf life; Cafe Au Laits are notoriously finicky, drooping in high temperatures and only lasting a few days from harvest to wilt. For us, this means we’re careful in how we use these dahlias. We wouldn’t use these in a wedding bouquet for an August wedding anymore- it’s just not worth the risk of a big dead flower in the middle of your bouquet!

Photo by Christian Oth Studios.

Using them in an installation with a water source is a much safer way to use these without fear of them melting. This October arch featured Cafe au Laits which remained hydrated throughout the ceremony via hidden water cups that we buried in the design!

Forged in the North.

Here’s a photo of a hyper-local Cafe Au Lait from last season- you can see at the very bottom tips, this flower is already beginning to wilt. EEK! Luckily, the wedding was the next day, so this flower was able to be salvaged before it was beyond use.

This means we’re extremely picky when it comes to sourcing these- we typically try to only buy these from local growers, where we can be sure they were harvested shortly before purchase and they weren’t flown to us on a plane.

Our favorite growers for these are located either right here in Brooklyn (looking at you, St. Millay!) or in the surrounding counties of upstate New York and New Jersey.

Forged in the North.

When sourced locally and used wisely in designs, Cafe au Lait dahlias are an unforgettable element of a wedding design. They may be tricky to work with, but the result is always 100% worth it, elevating a wedding design to something truly special.