Where Weddings Quietly Lose Money

I have been quoting weddings at Booker Flowers in Liverpool for a long time, and for years I did it the hard way. A bride would come in on a Saturday, we would talk for an hour, and I would take my notes home with me. That evening I would sit at the kitchen table with the wholesaler's price list, a calculator and a blank document, working out what every flower cost and typing the lot into a list.

Some of those weddings earned what I thought they had earned. Plenty did not, and I only found out in January.

This is the long version of something I have written about in an email to our customers. If you have twenty minutes, this is where the money goes on a wedding, and what I changed.

The Kitchen-Table Quote

The problem with pricing a wedding at the kitchen table is not the arithmetic. It is that every wedding starts from nothing.

You look up the roses that week. You count the eucalyptus. You add ribbon, wrap and pins. Then you guess at your time, add something for the setup because you know it always takes longer than you think, and send it. Next month another bride comes in and you do the whole thing again, from scratch, at a different time of night, in a different mood.

Two identical arrangements quoted six weeks apart came out at different prices in my shop more than once. Neither of them was wrong exactly. They were both guesses, made by a tired person, on a Sunday.

What a Wedding Costs to Make

Ask any florist what a bridal bouquet costs to make and you will get a reasonable answer. We make them constantly, so the number is in our hands.

Now ask what twelve table centres cost, plus an arch, plus the sundries, plus two of you at the venue for three hours on the Friday afternoon. That is where it gets shaky. The bouquet is the bit you know, and it is usually the smallest line on the quote.

The labour is where I was worst. On a wedding with fifteen pieces, the making, the conditioning, the loading, the driving and the setup add up to most of a working day for two people. If that is not on the quote as a line with a number against it, you have donated it.

The Changes You Never Charged For

A wedding sits on your books for six months or more, and it does not sit still. The palette shifts. The guest numbers move. Somebody's mother gets involved and the top table grows.

Every one of those changes has a cost. Forty buttonholes added in week six is real money in stems and real time in the workroom. What used to happen in my shop is that the change went in the diary, or in an email, and never made it onto the quote. Multiply that across a season of weddings and it is not a rounding error.

The other half of the same problem is the argument you cannot win. She remembers a figure from March. You remember a different one. Neither of you can find the email.

Price the Stem Once

The fix starts one level below the quote, in the ingredient library. Every flower, every bit of foliage and every sundry we buy sits there with two numbers against it: what we pay our supplier, and what we charge.

Eucalyptus at 67p in, £2.01 out. When the market moves I change it in one place, and every quote I build after that uses the new figure. The old price is kept with the date, so I can see what a stem cost me last March when I am looking at what last March's wedding really made.

Quotes already sent do not move. The price is captured onto the recipe at the moment I used it, so a wedding I priced in October holds October's numbers all the way through to the day.

Price the Design Once, Then Lock It

A recipe is one arrangement broken down: ten garden roses, five eucalyptus, three lisianthus, the ribbon, the wrap, and the labour to make it. Build it once and it drops into every wedding you quote from then on.

The part that changed how I price is that the cost sits directly under the sell price while I am building.

That bouquet is £185 to her and £111.48 of ingredients to me. I can see both while my hand is still on the mouse, which means I can make a decision about the margin while the decision is still worth making.

Then there is a tick box called Locked totals, and it is the one most people never find. Once I have settled on £185, I lock it. She changes the palette in week nine and I add another £80 of stems, and the figure I quoted her stays where it is. Nothing recalculates itself behind my back.

Save the Whole Quote as a Template

Save a quote as a template and it keeps the groups, the arrangements, the recipes, the labour, the photos and which prices are locked. The next enquiry starts half built.

The speed is the obvious benefit. The margin is the better one. A template means the quote that goes out while I am at a funeral on Thursday morning is priced the way I would have priced it, by someone who was not there when I worked the numbers out.

Once a year I open a quote, apply a percentage across the whole thing, round the figures to numbers I would say out loud, and save it as next season's template. Repricing takes an afternoon, which is the only reason it happens at all.

Every Change Gets Its Own Version

Change a quote in Events and it saves a new version rather than writing over the old one. Quote History is a button at the top of the quotation screen.

The proposal she signed is frozen exactly as she signed it, with her name, her email and a time stamp on it. Nobody can edit that afterwards, including me. When she adds those forty buttonholes in week six they go on as their own line at their own price, and the balance moves with them.

Deposits, Balances and What Is Still Owed

I record what comes in as it comes in, and the balance and the payment status follow on their own. Unpaid, part paid, paid, on the wedding and across the whole list.

I will be straight about what this does and does not do. Nothing chases the balance for you. You record what has been paid. What you get is one place that always knows what is outstanding, in place of a spreadsheet, a paper diary and your memory, which is what I had before.

From Signed Proposal to the Van

Before market, I open the Options menu on the quotation and choose Quotation Menu. It adds up every ingredient across every arrangement on that wedding, with total quantities and total costs, and a breakdown by category. I tick what I need and send it to a task for whoever is buying, or print it and take it with me.

Then everything I priced is already listed, ready to become orders. Nothing gets keyed in twice.

I set the date, choose collection or delivery, pick the venue, and split anything that needs splitting. Six table centres to the church on the Friday, six to the reception venue on the Saturday. Those orders land on the orders dashboard with the rest of that day's work, and get made up, checked and delivered like anything else.

What It Adds Up To

We have run our weddings and events at Booker Flowers this way since 2022. As things stand today, that is over 450 events, more than 200 proposals sent, 900 or so ingredients priced up, 600-odd venues saved and 50-plus quotation templates.

None of that got built in one sitting. It builds itself while you quote. The first wedding you price properly takes an evening. By the tenth you are loading a template, changing the colours and sending it the same afternoon, and the margin on it is a number you decided rather than a number you found out about in January.

Somebody Other Than Me

Chantelle Kennedy owns Pure Flowers of Distinction in Boyle, Co. Roscommon. She used to run one system for her shop orders and the till and a different one for weddings, and she moved the lot across.

The weddings side runs through Digital Florists Events, so a proposal can quote and amend over the months and the make-tasks let us start prepping ahead of the day.

Chantelle Kennedy, Pure Flowers of Distinction, Boyle

Amend over the months is the part I would underline. That is what a wedding is.

Where to Start

If you already use Digital Florists, open Events and rebuild a wedding you quoted last year. Put what you sent then next to what comes out, and look at the margin on both.

If you are not with us yet, Events is £75 a month per shop, ex VAT, with a 30-day trial and no card needed. Book a demo and we will price one of your real weddings on the call, using your stem prices, so you can see the margin on a job you already know the ending of.