Wedding & event flower pricing calculator

Piece by piece first, then the event. For each piece, take what its flowers cost you and multiply by your markup. A vase, a frame or the foam inside the piece are hard goods: they take their own, lower markup and no wastage. Add a share for wastage on the flowers, and add the making time at your studio rate. That is the price per piece; times the quantity, it is the line. Then add what belongs to the event rather than to any one piece: hired vases and stands, setup and teardown at your crew rate, and delivery. Add VAT if you are registered. The total is your quote — and every line on it is one you can explain to the client.

Published UK pricing guides put florist markup at 2.5× to 3.5× the cost of materials: everyday gift bouquets around 2.8× to 3.2×, premium work up to 3.5×. Markup pays for what the stems alone do not — rent, the cooler, the van, the consultations, the quotes that never book. Where an event sits in that range is your call: the planning before the day is real work, and markup is where it gets paid. Labour has its own lines here, so markup does not have to cover the making time as well. Hard goods — a container, a frame, the foam — are bought once and sold once, so they carry less. The example uses 3× on the flowers and 1.5× on the hard goods.

UK guides put wastage at 8% to 15% of material cost; plan an event towards the top of that range. Shop wastage is spread across a week of sales; an event has to carry its own. Flowers come by the bunch or the box, not by the stem, so what is left after the last centrepiece was bought for this job and no other. You order spares for breakage in transport, and a bloom that opens too early on the day cannot go back on the shelf. Wastage counts the flowers only: a vase or a frame does not wilt. The example uses 12% on the flowers for the wedding and 10% for the corporate job. Your real number is in your records: what you ordered against what went into the pieces.

Two kinds of time, at two rates. Making time is studio work: minutes per piece at your studio rate — 90 minutes for the bridal bouquet in the example, ten for a buttonhole. Published UK guidance runs £18 to £25 an hour for design labour. Setup and teardown happen on site: unloading, building the arch, dressing the tables, then coming back after the last guest to clear the room and collect what was hired. Those hours fall on early mornings, late evenings and weekends, and often need two people, so they have their own crew rate. Count person-hours: two people for three hours is six.

Yes. On its own line, delivery shows the client what the trip costs, and you price each venue by its real distance instead of hiding the trip inside the flowers. Count every trip the job needs: the drop-off on the day, a second run when the ceremony and the reception are in different places, and the collection of hired items afterwards. The van, the fuel and the drive belong here; the hours on site belong to setup. For VAT, delivery has no rate of its own — it follows the main supply of the quote, like setup.

Start with the country you sell in — choose it in the calculator and the rates follow. The principle is the same across Europe. Fresh flowers often take a reduced rate: 10% in France and Italy, 7% in Germany, 13.5% in Ireland, 6% in Belgium and Portugal. A service on site — building the arch, dressing the room — takes the standard rate everywhere. An arrangement sits between the two: many countries tax it by what dominates, the fresh material or the hard goods and the work, which is why the calculator calls its rate typical. Setup, teardown and delivery have no rate of their own; they follow the main supply of the quote. The UK is the simplest case: no reduced rate for cut flowers (HMRC VAT Notice 701/38), so every line of a UK quote carries 20% and the calculator shows one VAT line. Elsewhere, say what the quote is mainly — flowers, or a service on site — and the calculator sets one rate for the whole quote; if your accountant prefers every line with its own rate, open "Set VAT per line". Not VAT-registered — below your country's small-business limit and not registered voluntarily? Tick "I'm not VAT-registered" and the net total is your price. The table below lists every country's rates and its small-business scheme. This explains the rules; your accountant decides your case.

Corporate work comes in two shapes. A one-off event — a conference, a launch, a gala dinner — is priced like a wedding: per piece, then setup, delivery and VAT. When it runs over two days, price the refresh: in the corporate example, a two-day conference, the cocktail-table posies are replaced on the second morning — a visit with its own materials, minutes and trip. Business clients often compare quotes before VAT, so keep the net figure easy to find. Recurring work — weekly reception flowers, a hotel lobby changed each month — is priced per visit, times the visits in the agreement. Agree a date to review the price, because flower costs move with the seasons — or quote the dear months with a buffer.

The wedding example above is for 100 guests: a bridal bouquet, three bridesmaid bouquets, eight buttonholes, a ceremony arch, ten aisle arrangements, ten table centrepieces and a top-table garland, plus ten hired glass vases. The flowers are marked up 3× and the hard goods — the arch's mechanics, the containers, the foam — 1.5×; wastage is 12% on the flowers; making time is priced at the studio rate, six hours of setup and teardown at the crew rate, and there is one delivery. The net total is £2,807.30; with UK VAT at 20% the client pays £3,368.76. It is an editorial example, not a real client's job — put in your own costs and minutes and every figure follows.

Setup left off the quote: the day on site is often the longest of the job, and the easiest to give away. No wastage on events: an event buys whole bunches and boxes and has nowhere to sell what is left. Quoting from last season's prices: a wedding is booked months ahead, and flower prices move with the season in between — date the quote, check your costs again before you order, or put a buffer on the quote for the months that run dear. The second visit forgotten: teardown, the collection of hired items, the day-two refresh. The calculator gives each its own line, so none sits at zero unseen.

How Bloompath puts a buffer on a quote made months ahead→