Seasonal flower prices: how to quote a wedding months ahead

A wedding is sold in November and made in May. Between the two, the flowers are bought — in the week everyone else buys them. The quote stayed where it was; the cost did not. Nobody did anything wrong: the calendar did it. This guide is about closing that gap before it opens: why prices move, how to size a buffer from your own figures, and how to write a quote that still holds months later.

The figures in the examples are in euros and are illustrations, not prices. Put your own in their place.

Why do flower prices move with the season?

Two things move the price of a stem: how many people want it that week, and how many were grown for it.

Demand comes in peaks, and every country has its own. Valentine’s Day is everywhere. Mother’s Day falls on a different date from one country to the next — March or early April in Ireland and the UK, the second Sunday of May in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, 26 May in Poland, late May in France — and for many florists it is the biggest week of the year. Romania has Mărțișor on 1 March and 8 March; Poland has Women’s Day on 8 March; Poland and France buy chrysanthemums by the million for All Saints. In between runs the wedding season, late spring to early autumn, when the same roses, peonies and ranunculus are wanted everywhere at once.

Supply has its own calendar. A peony has a few weeks. A rose grown under glass costs more to heat in winter than in summer. A cold spring where the flowers are grown shifts what reaches the auction. At Royal FloraHolland — the auction most of Europe’s cut flowers pass through — the run-up to Valentine’s Day 2026 moved 464 million flowers, 150 million of them roses, and the auction’s peak season runs from there to Pentecost.

What matters for a quote is this: the peaks are predictable, their size is not. Valentine’s 2026 sold more flowers than 2025 at prices 10% lower, because 2025 had been short of stems and 2026 was not. The week you will buy in is known the day you quote. The price that week is not — only its direction, and roughly how far it went last year.

How do you size a buffer from your own purchases?

Start from what you paid, not from what you heard. Take the flowers of one wedding and find two numbers in your own invoices: what the stems cost in the week you quoted a similar wedding last year, and what they cost in the week you bought. The difference between the two, as a percentage, is your rise for that month.

Then put it on the quote. The buffer is a percentage on the whole quote, so size it from the part that moves — the flowers. Vases, candle holders and your hours cost the same in any month.

A worked example, on illustrative figures:

• the flowers for the wedding cost €1,000 at today’s prices;
• last year, between the quote and the purchase, the same flowers ran 18% dearer: €180 more;
• the quote comes to €3,000 before VAT;
• €180 on €3,000 is 6%.

A buffer of 6% covers last year’s rise exactly; 8% leaves room for a worse year. Round to a figure you can say out loud to a client, and use the same one for every wedding in that month, so your quotes stay consistent. Then do the same for each dear month: a Valentine’s week needs a different figure from a June Saturday, and a wedding in your quiet months may need none.

Keep the buffer out of your recipes and your shop prices. It belongs to the event, because the gap between the quote and the purchase belongs to the event.

Shown as its own line, or folded into the prices?

Both work; they say different things.

Shown, the buffer is one line on the quote — “Seasonal adjustment · 6%” — under the pieces. The client sees why a May wedding costs more than the same flowers in October, and the figure is easy to lower when you check your costs before ordering. Some clients ask about it; the answer is short, and true.

Folded in, every piece carries its share and nothing on the quote names the season. The quote reads as one price, which some clients prefer, and there is no line to negotiate. The cost is that the client cannot see the reason — and neither can you, three months later, unless you kept a note.

The total is the same either way. Choose by client: a couple comparing three florists may read the line as honesty; a corporate client wants one figure per piece. Whatever you choose, your cost and your margin stay on your side of the table.

How do you date a quote and recheck before you order?

A buffer protects the price. Three habits protect the quote.

1. Write how long the price holds — fourteen days, thirty — and from which date. After that it can be recalculated, and the client knows it from the start.
2. Write a substitution clause. A flower that is short or unusually dear in the week of the wedding can be replaced with one of like value and colour.
3. Check your costs again in the week you order, before the order goes to the supplier, not after. The flag you want is “this rose costs more than it did when you quoted”, with time to talk to the client or swap a stem — not a line on the supplier’s invoice.

Dated, with a substitution clause and a recheck before ordering, a quote made in November still holds in May. When it does not, you find out while it can still be changed.

Why keep a record of what you paid?

Because next year’s buffer is a number only if this year’s prices were written down.

The record is small: for each flower, the price per stem, the date and the supplier. It comes from three places — the price you type when you set up a material, the price on a supplier invoice, the price list a supplier sends. Kept for a year, it answers the question this guide starts from: how much dearer were my roses in the week of the wedding than in the week I quoted? A spreadsheet does it; a notebook does it. The point is that it is yours — your suppliers, your stem lengths, your quantities.

It also catches the quiet rise, the one that comes with no holiday: a supplier’s list moves in March and your recipes still carry February’s cost.

How does Bloompath do it?

Seasonal prices in Bloompath is the method above, kept for you.

A buffer sits on each event as a percentage: your studio default, a different figure for this wedding, and an extra bump for the months you name as your dear ones. It appears on the client’s quote as its own “Seasonal adjustment” line with its percentage, or folded into the quoted prices — you choose. Your recipes and your shop prices do not move.

Behind it is your own price record. Every price you pay is kept per flower, with its date and its supplier: the price you type on a material, the price on a supplier invoice you confirm, the price from a catalogue you import. Once you have a past season on record, Bloompath reads it back while you quote, flower by flower — “Last March you paid 18% more for this rose” — and suggests the buffer from your own purchases and nothing else. The first season builds the record and you set the buffer by hand; from the second, the number is yours.

And after the quote: when a flower’s price rises, every booked event that uses it is flagged, naming the flower, while there is still time.

To price a wedding piece by piece — flowers, hard goods, minutes, setup, VAT by country — the wedding and event calculator is free and needs no account. For a single bouquet, there is the bouquet price calculator.