The Reality of Donating Your Flowers After Your Wedding

I love flowers. I know flowers are so expensive, and I hate to waste anything too. If it was up to me, donating your flowers after your wedding would be a very easy process and every hospital and nursing home in every city would be fully open after events for us to bring flowers to them and bring joy. But this is not the reality of what actually happens, and the idea that you can just bring these flowers to these places after your wedding is actually not accurate.

#1: Showing Up Unannounced is Never a Good Idea

First off, showing up unannounced to any place like a hospital or a nursing home the day after a wedding or even the night of a wedding does not go over well. You’re bringing a natural product that could potentially have pests in it or you know other issues,  perhaps has a lot of greenery, it takes up a lot of space, etc, and medical facilities don’t like to be surprised by stuff like this.

#2: Finding Spaces and Vases is a Problem

Most of the time when people try to donate their own flowers as well, they also like to think it’s a really good idea to bring their big tall pieces to a nursing home or hospital where there’s literally no place to put something like this. A tall piece takes up so much space, and unless you bring it with a vase and the facility has like an entry table that would havevroom for this, there really isn’t a place to put it. Even for your low pieces, if you are able to do something like this and you are able to arrange it, please make sure that you show up to these locations with vases or cups or something that you can use to put these in. Don’t assume that a hospital just has a bunch of tall, sturdy cups or vases lying around. Reminder that you can’t take the vases from the wedding, as those belong to the florist and are rentals for you. They are not for you to keep unless you’ve purchase them, which most people don’t want to do.

#3: No One Really Wants to Do This Delivery

The idea that your floral team or your wedding planner is going to want to do this the day after or the night of an event is not realistic. I am all about helping my clients, and I am known to pick up a lot of stuff for them and return to them afterwards. But the day after a wedding, there is nothing less than I want to do than deliver anything anywhere. And it’s not like someone is going to bring flowers at 2:00 a.m. after an event is done to a hospital. Having your floral team, who’s also completely exhausted or a wedding planner do this is honestly unrealistic. Your friends and family are also super tired and they probably want to go to a brunch the next day and not be delivering flowers. I don’t mean to be cold, but the reality is it’s a pretty big task to ask somebody to do this after spending all day at your wedding.

#4: There are Non-Profits Who Can Do This, but the Service is Not Free

There are nonprofit organizations who do offer this service, who will come pick up your wedding flowers from your wedding at the end of the night and deliver them for you. However, one thing you may not be aware of that there is a cost for this service. Those organizations have to pay their staff as well. It is not uncommon for this cost to be about 10% of your floral budget. If you’re seeing the cost of flowers these days, that’s probably costing you at least $700 and possibly thousands of dollars being 10% of what you spent on floral. People think this is just a free service and these non-profits do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They do, but they still have staff they have to pay. Coming and picking up flowers and taking them to somewhere else, anywhere else, takes a lot of staff, and those people need to be paid. As the client, you’re going to be the one to pay for that service, so be prepared.

#5: Give Your Flowers to Your Guests Instead

All this to say, I’m proud to say that we are able to repurpose about 75% of our wedding flowers by giving them to guests. About the last 20 minutes of every wedding, we go around to the centerpieces. We zip tie the loose ones so that all the stems are together. I have little wastebasket sized trash bags in my kit that can go under a floral foam oasis for the low pieces as well. We leave them right there on the tables. You can’t even tell that we did this. As the guests are leaving, we have the DJ or band announce that the guests are welcome to take the flowers, but have to leave the vases because, again, those belong to the florist. As the guests are leaving for send off, we also ask, “Would you like to take some flowers? Would you like to take some flowers?” Guests are thrilled they get to take flowers. Of course, we make sure to save any for the parents of the bride or groom and for the couple themselves if they want any to take home, but we are able to give away about 75% of the flowers to the guests just by doing this. They’re able to enjoy them the rest of the week. The florists are excited as now they have less to tear down. We’re not inconveniencing anyone, and we’re still brightening the lives of our guests by giving them to them. I know it doesn’t feel quite as good as helping out at hospital or nursing home but, in the end, it is more practical and it doesn’t meet with a lot of contention. And it still keeps you from feeling like you just threw all your beautiful and expensive florals in the trash.

by Meredith Commender, CSEP