Flowers at reception and ceremony

For the florals themselves, I’ve never heard of this, but it’s very normal for the vases to be rentals from the florist unless you’re providing your own.

I've never heard of this. All of the florists I contacted allowed you to buy or rent the vases depending on if you want to keep them, but all of the flowers should be yours to keep

That is common to be charged to keep vases because florists rent them out for your use. If you want to transport them in vases to the nursing home/funeral parlor, check the Dollar Tree.


The flowers are yours to do with as you wish either way and the donation is an excellent idea.

Yes, vases are usually rentals and not purchases. If you want to keep the flowers and have a plan to transport them home at the end of the night, just let her know, but it would be very unusual for any contract to include the vases, also. We bought vases at Dollar Tree and put the flowers in them at the end of the night for guests to take home if they wanted, Our florist picked up her vases the next day. Read your contract to confirm what is/is not included.

View Quoted Comment Yes, I will be doing that. I may even have someone make sure a few centerpieces are given away and a few more kept to the side for me. I LOVE flowers and would LOVE to keep as many as I can.

Fees for the vases sound normal because vases are usually rented. But the flowers should be yours to keep. We provided our florist with our own inexpensive vases from Costco to pack up the flowers at the end of the night, because we wanted to repurpose the flowers for our farewell brunch the following morning. Then after the farewell brunch, we donated the flowers to a local nursing home of our choosing. Donating leftover flowers is always a nice thing to do, but very presumptuous of a florist to expect to be able to do so without your ok and input.

I agree with the others, whilst it would be a lovely thing to do to donate them - they are absolutely yours to do with as you wish. As the others have said though, vases are usually collected by the florist and I wouldn't expect to keep these.

View Quoted Comment That’s a great idea! The florist sent the quote and the vases were $10 each. I’m sure I can beat that price.

View Quoted Comment She can collect the vases but I want the flowers. Lol

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It worked for us! We used the florist's rental vases for the actual reception (since they were a lot nicer), but then at the end of the night when the florist's team came back to do the breakdown, they packed up a large portion of our flowers in the inexpensive vases that we provided, for us to take home. This enabled us to re-use our flowers the following morning at our farewell brunch before donating them later that day. I would definitely see if your florist can do something like this! And I would not book a florist who isn't okay with you keeping the flowers afterwards You're paying a lot and they are yours to keep

View Quoted Comment Ohh that’s a great idea. I can use her flowers and vases but designate someone at the end of the night to transfer the flowers to my vases. I was quoted $10 per vase which seems kinda high for clear glass vases.

Due to Covid, I had an elopement and wedding celebration as separate events so had two bouquets from two different florists. In both cases I was able to keep the vase and did not need to pay additional for it. For our wedding celebration, we rented bulk vases from our florist (which was clear in our contract and a separate fee from the flowers themselves) and purchased bulk flowers to do our own bud vase table arrangements. After our wedding, I brought my own vases and bottles from home to transfer the flowers into and then we drove around town gifting them to our wedding guests along with beer and wine we didn't use up at our reception.

As others have mentioned, you are buying the flowers, not renting them, so what happens with them after your event is entirely up to you. I personally would buy (either from your florist or elsewhere) vases and transfer the flowers to them and then have guests take them as wedding favors, or gift them to people who were particularly helpful to you or who you know would love and appreciate them.