Getting started as a wedding florist

Floristry has a workflow unlike most other wedding vendors. Your delivery and setup happen early — often before the first guest arrives — and your timeline items affect every other vendor’s logistics. Your bouquet needs to be at the getting-ready location before the photographer arrives; your ceremony arrangements need to be set before the guests do. Getting those timing requirements into the shared run sheet means the planner and venue know exactly what you need without repeated phone calls.

Step 1 — Complete your profile

Go to Settings → Profile and fill in:

Business name — your floristry business name
Category — select Florist
Location — your base city or studio location
Bio, website, Instagram — your portfolio and aesthetic are everything in floristry; link them directly

Why: When a planner adds you to a wedding workspace, other vendors see your profile. Your Instagram feed is often the fastest way for a couple or planner to understand your style when they’re considering recommending you.

Step 2 — Build a floristry enquiry form

Open Forms → Enquiry and customise the questions. For florists, useful questions are:

Wedding date
Ceremony location (venue name and address — this determines your delivery window and whether you need to load a freight lift)
Reception location (if different from ceremony — and whether flowers need to be moved between spaces)
Estimated guest count (relevant for centrepiece quantities)
What arrangements they’re looking for: bridal bouquet, bridesmaids’ bouquets, buttonholes, ceremony arch, ceremony aisle, reception centrepieces, cake flowers, other
Style preferences: structured/loose, garden/romantic/wild, specific flower preferences or hard exclusions (some clients are allergic to lilies)
Colour palette
Budget range or indicative spend
How they heard about you

Why: Floristry quotes need a lot of information before they can be accurate. An enquiry form that collects arrangement types, style, and quantity information means your first response to a couple can be an informed conversation rather than a long list of clarifying questions.

Step 3 — Reply through your inbox with AI drafting

Every account includes a free inbox at yourhandle@wedding.computer — claim your handle under Settings → Business settings. Open Inbox to see enquiries, your replies, and anything you’ve forwarded in, threaded by conversation. Every message sent or received here logs itself automatically onto that contact’s record, alongside their enquiry-form answers and invoice.

When you reply, click AI draft for a first pass built from that contact’s enquiry answers, their wedding details, and your own voice and context. It covers the routine cases — a warm follow-up, telling a couple you’re not available for their date, or referring them to another florist — so you’re editing a draft rather than starting from a blank message.

Why: As Step 2 covers, floristry quotes need a lot of information before they’re accurate, and chasing the missing pieces by email is where a lot of vendor time goes. Because the AI draft is grounded in what the couple already told you on the enquiry form, your reply can ask specifically for what’s still missing — a colour reference, a firmer guest count — instead of a generic checklist, and the whole exchange sits on that contact’s record so you’re not searching a separate mailbox when the order needs confirming.

Step 4 — Set up quote-based invoicing

Floristry is almost always quoted individually rather than packaged at fixed prices. Open Invoices → New invoice and create a separate invoice for each wedding, customising its line items and payment schedule.

A typical floristry invoice structure:

Quote total — itemised by arrangement type
Deposit (20–50%, depending on your policy) at booking
Balance — due 4–6 weeks before the wedding when the order is being confirmed and flowers need to be sourced

Before creating invoices, write your default service contract under Settings → Contracts. Include your cancellation policy, substitution policy (when a specific flower isn’t seasonally available), and what happens if the date changes. Wedding Computer keeps one default contract and copies it onto each new invoice; edit that invoice’s copy when a wedding needs different terms without changing earlier invoices.

On the booking page, the couple types their full name and email address and confirms that they agree. Wedding Computer records that typed acceptance against the invoice. This is not a drawn signature, and it does not create a downloadable signed PDF; the confirmation email includes a text copy of the accepted contract.

Why: Flower orders involve purchasing stock — often ordering stems weeks in advance. Your cancellation terms need to reflect your cost exposure, and the couple needs to understand when their accepted contract and recorded booking fee make the order firm.

Step 5 — Connect Stripe for payments

Go to Settings → Payments → Connect Stripe and complete the Stripe onboarding.

Why: The booking-fee instalment can be paid through Stripe Checkout. Later balance instalments remain on the invoice schedule for you to track and record when received; the invoice history shows what has been paid and what remains outstanding.

Step 6 — Add delivery and setup times to the run sheet

When you join a wedding workspace, go to Timeline and add your items. For a typical floristry day:

Delivery to getting-ready location (if bouquets go there first) — include the address and a time window
Ceremony setup start — when you need access to the ceremony space. This needs to work around the venue’s bump-in schedule
Ceremony setup complete — when you’ll be done and cleared from the space
Ceremony to reception floral transfer (if flowers move) — the window when you or your team moves centrepieces or arrangements
Reception setup complete
Collection / pack-down (if you’re collecting hire items like vessels and stands after the reception)

Set these to vendors visibility so the planner, venue, and photographer can all see your schedule.

Why: Florists have complex logistics that involve multiple locations at specific times. The photographer needs to know that the bouquets are delivered at 10am so they can capture detail shots before the bride gets dressed. The venue needs to know your setup window so they don’t lock the ceremony space. Publishing this in the shared run sheet once means you’re not emailing the planner, venue, and photographer separately.

Weather and wind risk: Open the wedding workspace’s Weather section to see the automatic forecast for the wedding’s date and location — the two conditions that matter most to a fresh floral installation are wind and rain, and both are visible here before you’re standing in a car park deciding whether to build the arch as planned. As soon as the wedding is booked, the section shows an AI-written long-range climate outlook for the location and month, useful when you’re choosing hardier stock or deciding how much weatherproofing hardware (extra staking, wind-resistant mechanics) to plan for months out. A live day-by-day forecast takes over during the final week, with hourly conditions and rain chance in the last 48 hours — the point where you make the real call on securing, wrapping, or substituting delicate stems. The same section calculates sunrise, golden hour, and sunset for the date; use Add sun times to drop them onto the timeline so your ceremony-ready deadline can be set relative to golden hour instead of a fixed clock time, and so the photographer’s shot list and your setup window are reasoning about the same sun.

Why: Fresh flowers are the one thing on a wedding day that weather can genuinely ruin rather than just complicate — a gust that’s a non-issue for a marquee can flatten an unsecured aisle installation. Seeing the forecast and outlook inside the same workspace where you’re already building your timeline means wind and rain risk is part of planning the setup, not a separate check you do on a weather app and hope you remember to repeat closer to the date.

Step 7 — Keep order notes per wedding

The Notes section of each wedding workspace is your working document for that wedding’s specific arrangements. Use it to record:

Detailed order: each arrangement, stem counts, varieties
Colour and style references
Substitution notes (if a client has specific preferences or exclusions)
Delivery contact at the venue
Hire item list (what needs to be collected after)

Mark these notes as Private so only you see them — the couple and other vendors don’t need your order details.

Why: When you’re managing multiple weddings, having the specific order notes in the workspace means you’re not hunting through emails or a separate spreadsheet when the flower order arrives and you need to confirm varieties.

Step 8 — Set your availability

Open Calendar → Availability and block every booked date. Under Settings → Availability sharing, choose Public if couples should be able to check dates before enquiring. Florists often do one wedding per weekend day but may take multiple bookings if they have a team — manage this manually by blocking dates as needed.

Why: An accurate availability calendar means couples check before enquiring. A date that’s already full shouldn’t be receiving enquiries.

Step 9 — Connect your calendar safely

Open Your profile → Your wedding calendar to create a private personal feed. Choose Subscribe in Apple Calendar, or copy the link into Google Calendar or Outlook.

With Pro, open Settings → Calendar & contacts → Create calendar connection for a business-calendar feed or CalDAV account. Create a separate connection for each app or device so it can be revoked independently.

Why: Floristry days often start at 4–5am for flower market runs. Wedding events and permitted timeline rows can include their saved locations, so you can navigate without looking them up on the wedding morning. Calendar connections are read-only: changes made in the connected app do not flow back to Wedding Computer.

You’re ready when:

Your profile links to your Instagram portfolio
Your enquiry form asks about arrangement types, style, quantities, and colour palette
You’ve claimed your @wedding.computer handle and know where AI drafting is in your inbox
Each invoice is quote-based with its own line items and deposit/balance schedule
Cancellation and substitution terms are in your default service contract
Stripe is connected
You know where to check wind/rain risk and the sunrise-to-sunset window before locking in your setup plan
Your availability is accurate and Public
Your read-only calendar feed is subscribed

What to do right now

Open your next booked wedding workspace and add your delivery and setup windows to the shared timeline. Check the Weather section for that date’s outlook while you’re there, then contact the venue to confirm your access window — florists are often the first vendor on site on a wedding morning, and a locked ceremony space at 7am is a bad start to the day.

Go deeper

Enquiry forms — building arrangement and style questionnaires, embedding on your website
Invoices, payments & contracts — quote-based invoicing, substitution terms, and cancellation policy in contracts
Calendar & availability — iCal feed with venue addresses for delivery runs, availability settings
Run sheets & timeline — how delivery windows, setup items, sun-event anchoring, weather, and pack-down appear in the shared schedule
Email — your @wedding.computer inbox, how replies link to contacts, and using it alongside your own address
AI features & integrations — one-click drafted replies and the AI expected-weather outlook

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