Inflation driving a thorn into wedding plans, with budding newlyweds trimming flowers from their budgets

Inflation has led budding newlyweds to cut costs in ways they may never have expected, and that includes trimming the rising cost of flowers for their ceremonies.

Zola, a wedding planning site, says the 2024 average price tag for a wedding is over $30,000. 

Wedding experts blame it on inflation, which has hit all categories of planning a wedding, even down to the flowers that are picked. 

Some couples and florists are having sticker shock from the rising prices. 

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A New York bride says she wanted the "whole nine yards" for her wedding day.  

"I knew I wanted flowers everywhere," says bride-to-be Emily Reynolds, who was determined to create the wedding of her dreams. "I even wanted a floral chandelier that I saw on Pinterest, and I thought, I need to have that."

But it was the price of flowers that made her rethink how her wedding planning would go. "The prices were starting at [$8,000]," she says. 

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Flowers went up 9.4% from a year earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to consumer price index data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The University of Minnesota horticulture department says 80% of cut flowers are imported to the U.S., and a Los Angeles-based florist says imported flowers are more durable than those locally grown. 

A large percent of cut-flowers come from Colombia, Canada and Ecuador, according to the USDA. 

La Petite Gardenia owner, Alison Franchi, says that's where the rising cost comes from, "there’s so much on the backend. From shipping the flowers across the country or across the world."

She says in her 20 years of being a florist, the cost of flowers have risen substantially. 

Franchi says the fuel costs, labor, packaging and wholesalers are driving the rising prices, which means she also has to.

"It’s wedding season, it’s the summer, so many people want peonies, everybody loves them, and so the supply and demand… the cost has gone up, significantly."

She says, "[peonies] used to be 2.50, 3 dollars a stem. And now they’re 7.50, 10 dollars a stem."

Bride-to-be Reynolds decided the price was too high and snipped the fresh flowers altogether. 

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She went with a cheaper option - artificial flowers. 

Saving nearly $7,000 and making all of her arrangements herself. Even posting them on her TikTok.