Wedding Flowers 101, Part 2: Do I need a florist for my wedding flowers?

From the last blog post, you know that the key to making your wedding flower planning a piece of cake is knowing how you want them to make you feel…

So, now what?

Now, the easy parts! First up, picking your florist.

Photograph by Presley Castle Photography

Assuming you don’t intend to DIY all of your flowers, the next step is choosing your florist, but which one?

Though floral designers are as unique as the weddings they design for, most will likely fall into one of three simple categories: Full-service, Partial-service, and A La Carte. 

Photo Credit: Presley Castle Photography

Full-Service Floral Design

Like the name implies, a full-service floral designer will offer all the things. 

They’ll deliver beautiful floral designs, and on top of that they’ll offer everything needed to take wedding flowers completely off your plate for your wedding day. 

And this is the type of florist to go to if you want a teammate to plan with. They often provide services like one-on-one consultations and detailed proposals with inspiring mood boards, and they’ll be in communication with you as you journey closer to wedding day.

A full-service florist will use this upfront time investment for co-creating a detailed artistic plan with you. They’ll take their expert knowledge of flowers and mechanics and elevate your vision times 1,000, too.

Then they’ll execute the plan, checking off every ‘wedding flowers to-do’ and provide transportation, setup, installation, and takedown services for the designs they deliver. 

And you just get to enjoy the celebration!

Strawberry Moon Blooms is now accepting inquiries for 2025 Full Floral Design Services. Inquire using the questionnaire linked below. Photograph by AJ Photography.

A La Carte

Here at Strawberry Moon Blooms, we offer an A La Carte menu of designs for couples who don’t need full floral design services.

There are countless reasons why you might choose to go the A La Carte route for your fresh wedding flowers. Most commonly, our couples have selected a venue that’s already so incredibly gorgeous that personal flowers are typically the only designs they need (bouquets and boutonnieres).

An A La Carte menu will list the designs you can choose from for your ceremony or reception, to be created by a professional floral designer. But those designs will just need to be picked up, usually on the morning of your wedding.

You cover the logistics of getting your flowers from Point A to Point B; your designer does all of the work of sourcing the flowers and materials, conditioning each stem to be event-ready, and creating breathtaking designs with a practiced eye and hand. 

A June 2024 Bridal bouquet captured by Presley Castle Photography featuring locally grown Shirley poppies, nigella, dahlias, chocolate lace flowers, zinnias, phlox, delphinium, bupleurum, yarrow, bachelor buttons and more.

And being a farmer-florist, I take things one step further by offering color palette themes of our seasonally-sourced flowers. My designs use locally grown flowers first and foremost for incomparable freshness and beauty.

Using locally-grown flowers means I can’t guarantee specific varieties or shades, but our couples trust that all of those subtle tones of color in all those unique varieties will take their color palette theme to the next level for truly one-of-a-kind designs. 

Dahlias, celosia, ageratum, and cosmos, all featured in this wrapped bouquet in our Farmstand, are only available from designers who source locally-grown flowers. This is due to the poor shipping viability of these varieties.

Still not sure which florist you need? Take my quiz! 

Yours truly, captured by Emily Miller of Ace Photography. Every florist and floral designer is unique, including farmer-florists. Look for a floral designer whose values align with your own to secure a perfect match.

Now that you know what kind of florist you need, head on over to Part 3 of this blog series where you can become an instant expert on how much your wedding flowers should cost.

Look at you go!

You are well on your way to being over the moon about your wedding flowers and getting them checked off your list with zero stress.

You’ve got this!

Sara