Cost is always a consideration when purchasing wedding flowers, so how much do flowers cost anyway? Lets take the rose for example. If I go to my local grocery store I can purchase a dozen roses for $9.99 that is 83 cents a stem. I have to buy a dozen and they may not have the color I want. Grocery stores buy mass quantities from South America to get this deal, the quality is OK, not great.
When I go to my local wholesaler I have choices, I can buy South American roses for about $1.00-$1.30 per stem depending on the season and I have to buy 25. The quality is good but not the best. If I want the best quality I buy California roses for sometimes up to $1.70 per stem that is almost $40.00 for a bunch of 25 stems, wow! To get the best price, just below what I would spend at the grocery store, I place an order for 8 bunches of South American roses all the same variety. That gives me 200 stems of the same flower at about .80 cents each, which means I would need a lot of the same color. The longer the stem the more you pay. Sometimes shorter stems are not available so I end up with more expensive longer stems that I have to cut off anyway.
Quality, usually there is a broken stem(s) that more often than not gets tossed. Or maybe there is mold and they cant be used. It is really disappointing to open a package of what looks like beautiful roses and some of them are brown or grey and fuzzy. Of course this is like throwing money in the garbage. If it is more than a few stems the wholesaler will come through and have perfect flowers sent Fed ex, but they arrive the next day and that puts you behind,oh well Sometimes the desired variety is just not available and a substitution is required, so with a leap of faith and the help of your trusted wholesaler different variety is ordered some times with great results.
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