Wedding Flower Consultation: The Florist's Question Sheet

A wedding flower consultation is the meeting where a couple's vision becomes a list of pieces you can actually price. It has two jobs, and only two: settle the facts a quote needs, and give the couple a reason to believe you can make what they described.

Too many consultations end the way they began, warmly and with nothing quotable in your hands. The couple leave delighted. You leave with a phone full of screenshots, a venue you have never stood in, and a budget nobody said out loud.

The fix is not a better question list. Question lists are everywhere, and they all assume the questions get asked in the room. The fix is moving the questions out of the meeting and into the week before it. Then the hour you get goes on the one thing email cannot do: a couple deciding whether they trust you.

Related: Wedding florist pricing: what to charge

What a wedding flower consultation is actually for

To leave holding two things. A piece list specific enough to price, and a couple who believe you can make it. Everything else in that hour is decoration, and decoration is what you sell, not what you run a meeting on.

A vision is not quotable. A piece list is. "Romantic, whites and greens, a bit wild" describes both of these weddings equally well:

• a bouquet and one buttonhole
• an arch, twelve table centres and eighteen buttonholes

Until you know which one you are quoting, you are guessing, and a guess sent as a quote is how a florist works a wedding at a loss.

There were 231,949 marriages and civil partnerships in England and Wales in 2023, an 8.6% decrease on the year before.

What that does and does not tell you: one year is not a trend, and your postcode is not England and Wales. It is one reason not to assume the pool of couples refills on its own, and that the enquiry you lose is replaced by the next one.

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Send the questions before you meet, not during

Email the question sheet the moment the meeting is booked. The couple answer it at home with the venue's website open and both mothers on speakerphone, and you arrive already knowing the date, the pieces and the number.

Call it a form template, a checklist or a question sheet. What matters is it arrives before you do. A meeting spent capturing facts is a data entry session with tea in it, and the minutes it eats come out of the hour you needed for design.

The second reason is quieter, and it is the one that changes your quote. A budget is easier to type into a box than to say out loud to someone whose work you have just admired.

• Asked on paper, the money question gets you a number.
• Asked across a table, in front of the parents, it gets you "we are flexible", which cannot be priced.

August was the most popular month to get married in England and Wales in 2023, when 14.3% (32,121) of marriages took place. Whether your own enquiries bunch that way is worth checking against your diary, but the principle survives either answer: a process that only works in a quiet week is not a process.

Related: Marketing to engaged couples

The wedding flower consultation question sheet

Five blocks, in this order: the fixed facts, the pieces, the look, the money and the day itself. Copy it into your own email template, and replace every bracketed placeholder with your own verified details before a couple sees it.

Everything in square brackets is a placeholder, not a fact about your shop. Swap in your real business name and terms, and delete any line whose answer you would not act on.

Congratulations. So that our meeting on [date] is about flowers rather than admin, could you fill this in first? Guesses are welcome, nothing is binding, and [your business name] brings the ideas.

1. The fixed facts

• Wedding date, ceremony venue and full address
• Reception venue, if it is somewhere else
• What time the ceremony starts, and when we can get in to set up
• Who our contact is on the day, and their mobile number
• The best email and phone number for each of you

2. The pieces

• Bouquets: one for the bride, and how many others
• Buttonholes and corsages: how many of each
• Ceremony flowers: an arch, pedestals, aisle ends, or nothing
• Table centres: how many tables, and how many people per table
• Anything else already pictured, from cake flowers to a flower crown

3. The look

• Three photographs you love, with a line on what you love about each
• Colours you want, and colours the dresses have already ruled out
• Any flower that has to be in it, and why it matters
• Any flower or scent to keep out, including allergies

4. The money

• The total you have set aside for flowers
• Whether that figure covers delivery, setup and takedown
• Which piece matters most if the budget has to bend

5. The day itself

• Where the wedding party is getting ready, and the address
• What time the bouquets and buttonholes should arrive
• Whether anything moves from ceremony to reception, and who may move it
• Any venue rules on fixings, candles or naked flames

One line to add at the bottom: ask whether you may keep their details on file until after the wedding. Doing so means you are using personal information, and under the Data Protection (Charges and Information) Regulations, organisations including sole traders that use personal information need to pay a data protection fee to the Information Commissioner's Office, unless they are exempt.

Whether your shop is exempt is a question for the ICO's own guidance, not a florist's blog. Either way, ask only for what the job needs: a wedding needs a delivery address, and never a date of birth.

What the meeting is for once the facts are in

Design, doubt and trust. You are showing a couple what their own answers look like as real flowers, finding the gap between what they wrote and what they meant, and letting them decide whether you are the person for it.

Bring stems, not photographs. A mood board is a promise nobody has to keep, and a couple who have held an eryngium have a settled opinion about eryngium.

Read their budget answer back before you show them anything, so everything you show after it is something they can have. Then say what you would change: the florist who agrees with everything sounds like the cheapest option with better manners.

The test at the end of the hour: could you describe this wedding back to them, in their words, without looking at the sheet? If you cannot, you talked, and the proposal will show it.

Sort your wedding florist portfolio by venue type before the season starts, so what you show fits their room.

Turning it into a proposal they can say yes to

Price the piece list, not the mood. Send it as three named versions of the same wedding, itemised, with one date across all three saying when the quote lapses.

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Itemise, always. A single total gives a couple one lever and it is you. A list of pieces gives them ten, and none of those ten is you.

Three versions works on the same logic. It is a selling habit rather than a measured effect, but a couple weighing three of your versions is spending that evening inside your quote.

Related: How to build wedding flower packages

Put a validity date on every quote. You buy those stems at whatever the market charges in the week of the wedding, not at the price you quoted from.

That date belongs in the wedding florist contract too, next to the deposit and the cancellation terms.

Then send it while the meeting is still the most interesting thing that happened to them this week. How fast is yours to discover: log the gap between meeting and proposal for your next ten enquiries and see which ones booked. Two days is a sensible starting experiment, not a law.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happens at a wedding flower consultation?

The florist establishes the date, the venues, the pieces, the look and the budget, shows relevant work, and agrees a next step. Done well, the facts arrive on a question sheet beforehand and the meeting is spent on design. It ends with an itemised proposal.

What questions should I ask my florist during a wedding floral consultation?

Ask what is in season for your date, what the florist would change about your list, what happens if a chosen flower is unavailable, and who sets up on the day. A florist who welcomes those questions is telling you something a portfolio cannot.

What is the average cost of flowers for a 100 person wedding?

Guest count on its own prices nothing. A hundred guests might mean twelve table centres or none, a ceremony arch or a bare registrar's table, one bridesmaid or six. A national average is built from other people's weddings. Price this piece list instead.

What is the 3:5:8 rule for flowers?

A grouping convention at the bench, usually described as odd numbered clusters of stems at staggered heights, quoted in several competing versions. Treat it as a composition habit passed between florists rather than a measured effect. It belongs in the design conversation, not on your consultation agenda.

Should I charge for a wedding flower consultation?

Free or paid, nobody gives that hour away. If you do not charge, that hour is a cost you carry somewhere, which makes this a pricing decision, not a courtesy. A small redeemable fee filters out browsing, and occasionally filters out a couple who were only nervous. Decide once and publish it.

Key takeaways

Filling the weeks peak season does not fill is a marketing job, not a consultation one. It is the job LocalBrandHub does for florists: a social media calendar to plan against and a library of ready made seasonal campaigns. The rest of the wedding side is mapped out in how to build a wedding florist business.

Sources

• Office for National Statistics
• Information Commissioner's Office