How to Become a Wedding Florist: A Retail Florist's Guide

From Retail Counter to Wedding Venue: Making the Leap

If you run a retail flower shop and have been thinking about adding weddings to your business, you are in a stronger position than you realize. You already understand flowers, seasonality, sourcing, and client relationships. What you need is a roadmap for translating those skills into the wedding market, where a single event can generate what your shop earns in a week or more.

At CHIC Flowers, we made this transition ourselves. Here is what we learned along the way, and what we now teach in our Chic Academy online course.

Why Retail Florists Make Great Wedding Florists

Your retail experience gives you advantages that aspiring wedding florists starting from scratch simply do not have:

• You know your flowers. You understand varieties, conditioning, and what holds up in heat.


• You have supplier relationships. You already have accounts with wholesalers and growers.


• You understand client service. You handle customer expectations daily.


• You have a workspace. Your shop provides design space, cooler storage, and a professional meeting place.

The gap is not skill. It is process, pricing, and positioning.

Step 1: Decide What Kind of Weddings You Want

Not every wedding is the same. Before you start marketing, decide your sweet spot:

• Budget range: We recommend targeting $5,000 to $15,000 for your first year. Below $3,000, the labor barely justifies the work. Above $15,000 requires a portfolio you have not built yet.


• Event count: Aim for 10 to 15 weddings in your first year. This is manageable alongside retail operations.


• Style: Define your aesthetic. Are you romantic garden? Modern minimalist? Bohemian organic?

Step 2: Build a Wedding Portfolio (Before You Have Weddings)

This is the chicken-and-egg problem every retail florist faces. You need a portfolio to book weddings, but you need weddings to build a portfolio. Here is how to solve it:

• Styled shoots: Collaborate with local photographers, planners, and venues for styled sessions. You provide flowers, they provide photos.


• Offer two or three weddings at cost to friends, family, or local couples in exchange for professional photography rights.


• Repurpose retail work. Your best centerpieces and arrangements can be photographed for social media.

Step 3: Price for Profit, Not by the Stem

The biggest mistake retail florists make when entering weddings is pricing by the stem or by the arrangement, the same way you price a walk-in order. Wedding pricing requires a completely different model:

• Charge for design time. Consultations, mood boards, and proposals take hours.


• Charge for labor. Setup, installation, and breakdown can take an entire day for your team.


• Charge for logistics. Vehicle costs, early morning starts, and travel to venues.


• Build in your margin. A healthy wedding order should generate 65 to 70 percent gross margin, not the 50 percent you might be used to in retail.

We cover pricing in detail in our Chic Academy course, including proposal templates and line-item breakdowns.

Step 4: Get Your First Venue Referrals

Venue referrals are the lifeblood of a wedding floral business. Here is how to build those relationships:

• Visit local venues with a printed or digital portfolio. Ask to speak with the venue coordinator.


• Offer to do a complimentary installation at a venue open house or bridal showcase.


• Follow up consistently. Send seasonal arrangements to venue coordinators as thank-you gifts.


• Deliver flawlessly. One great wedding at a venue leads to referrals for years.

Step 5: Separate Your Wedding Brand

Consider whether your retail shop name works for weddings. Many successful florists create a separate wedding brand or at least a dedicated section of their website. This allows you to:

• Position yourself as a wedding specialist, not just a flower shop that does weddings


• Set pricing expectations appropriate for wedding-level service


• Build a wedding-specific social media presence

The Bottom Line

Adding weddings to your retail flower business is one of the highest-ROI moves you can make. A shop that does 10 weddings per year at $5,000 to $10,000 each adds $50,000 to $100,000 in revenue with margins significantly better than daily retail sales.

The transition takes planning, but the foundation you already have, your flower knowledge, your supplier relationships, your design skills, gives you a massive head start over anyone trying to become a wedding florist from scratch.

Ready to make the transition? Enroll in Chic Academy and learn the complete system for adding weddings to your floral business.