What was your florist labor fee?

This really depends on how much set up they’re doing. Our florist only delivered our flowers because my DOC set up the centerpieces. Our florist charged either a $75 or $100 flat delivery fee within certain mileage (I can’t remember which amount it ended up being) but setting up centerpieces would have been an additional cost. Our total flower bill was just shy of $800.

Reach out to another florist and get a different quote! That seems so high!

View Quoted Comment

We absolutely are! I was just so shocked and upset by it, lol. I was expecting maybe a 20% labor fee MAX. This was a $1700 labor fee- and we only have 13 tables and a head table- no room flip or anything! Worst of all, it's a FAMILY FRIEND that gave us this quote.

That does seem high, my florist is charging 11% of total cost for labor. (I'm in Chicago Suburbs, IL)

Hi! I'm also located in Houston, I haven't found my florist yet but the most expensive set up and tear down fee I've seen so far is $500, I haven't ran into anyone with a "labor" fee yet. I may be on a smaller budget than you but a 33% labor fee sounds crazy to me! I would personally keep looking around.

Our first floral quote about gave me a heart attack, honestly. I asked for a breakdown if they were to do absolutely everything I was looking for, and the products themselves were almost $7500, and service was 20% so the quote itself came out to almost $9000. Obviously I wouldn't be using a florist for EVERY little thing though so that quote was to give me the "high" end of things and I also had a proposal from them for the minimum I'd want, still 20% but the quote came out to about $2500.

One of the biggest service charge differences between these two quotes was the cost of delivery only or delivery & setup.

I'd ask a florist you're interested in for a variety of proposals to try to really determine what you can afford and what you want.

View Quoted Comment Wow that’s insane!! When I looked into doing a destination wedding on Mackinac island in Michigan there was only 1 florist we could have possibly used and they only charged a $150 delivery fee. There was a minimum spend to have them set everything up which we were gonna hit no problem but still. Over $1700 for a extra fee sounds way too high. Like I would understand maybeeee $800 but twice that IM OUT hahaha

Ours was pretty similar. The actual flowers themselves came out to around $4000 but after the labor fees and taxes our final floral bill was around $6000. The high fees were annoying but there really was quite a lot of set up and break down involved on the part of the florist and her team. We reached out to about 12 different florists in our city and found most of them to have similar fees. I would reach out to some other florists to see if what you are being quoted is in line with others in your area

My daughter's florist was doing bridal party bouquets, corsages, and boutennaires only. He lived a block from the venue and was going to charge $200 for delivery! We asked a friend to pick them up the morning of instead and bring them. Then we used FiftyFlowers,com for centerpieces, aisle flowers and saved a lot of money.

Our service charge was 20% of our pre-tax amount.

33% is really reasonable. Take in to account they are prepping the flowers, putting the arrangements together, delivery and setup, etc. That's kind of industry standard around here honestly. The wedding florals are SO MUCH MORE than just the one day...
And if it was a family friend, I'd hope you'd be considerate that that is their job and how they make money. It's essentially their takehome, And they will need to pay their employees a fair wage out of that 33% as well.
Floral designers and florists are slightly different, too - if there is a shop sometimes they can charge less than a studio designer since they can sell excess flowers - whereas a studio designer will be using every stem possible and not wasting anything.

Just out of curiosity about your decision because I’m im the exact same scenario! Did you move forward?