The core challenge
A single wedding is a manageable project. Wedding season is several of them running in parallel, each with its own proposal, deposit schedule, and delivery/setup timeline — and some weekends carrying more than one event.
What matters most during wedding season
- A real proposal-to-booking pipeline, so you can see which inquiries are just browsing versus ready to book and pay a deposit
- Deposit and balance tracking per wedding, not just a single invoice total
- A production schedule that accounts for the actual build time each wedding needs, not just the delivery date
- A clear plan for weekends with more than one wedding — staffing, vehicle capacity, and setup/breakdown windows all have to be checked against each other, not planned wedding-by-wedding in isolation
- A cutoff for how close to the date a new wedding booking can still be accepted
Pricing a wedding fairly to your business
Wedding work often includes significant labor — consultations, mockups, and setup/breakdown time — that's easy to under-price if a proposal is built only around the flowers themselves. Pricing off the same real ingredient-and-labor cost basis used for everyday arrangements, scaled up, tends to hold up better than a flat per-wedding guess. See our guide to pricing floral arrangements for the underlying approach.
Common questions
How many weddings can one shop handle in a weekend?
It depends entirely on your staffing, vehicle capacity, and design-team size — there's no universal number. The important part is checking capacity across all of a weekend's weddings together, not approving each one in isolation.
How far in advance do most florists book weddings?
Timelines vary widely by market and shop size; many florists take bookings anywhere from several months to over a year out, with a cutoff for how close to the date a new booking can still be accepted.
Should I require a deposit?
Most florists doing wedding work do require some form of deposit to hold a date, given the labor and inventory commitment involved — exact terms vary by shop.