Business
56
March | 2022
verybody loves a wedding—including many
in the floral industry (not all, though!). To
put it in a nonromantic, crass way, we make
money from such events (or at least we
should)—but could we make even more?
We're not talking about finding ways to
make weddings more expensive; we're
discussing ways the floral industry can grab a larger slice
of the monies available. Let's first see what things cost.
According to data from eKnot.com's annual "Real
Wedding Study," the average price of a wedding in the
United States was $28,000 in 2019; it dropped 32 percent,
to $19,000, in 2020; and it rebounded slightly (18 percent)
in 2021, to $22,500. For those looking to blame the
pandemic for the drop, think again.
SELLING
MORE
THAN JUST
WEDDING
FLOWERS
While planning a wedding is the domain of those getting married and, often,
wedding and event specialists, florists can expand their reach to become more
involved in supplying more than just the floral atmosphere.
A sense of frugality on the part of wedding planners may
actually be the reason. Consider that in 2016, the average
cost of a wedding in the U.S. was $35,309; dropping
slightly (5.4 percent) in 2017, to $33,391; rebounding
ever so slightly (1.6 percent) in 2018, to $33,931; and
down again 17.5 percent in 2019, to $28,000, according
to eKnot.com.
Now, you can probably blame the pandemic for the 2020
average cost dropping to $19,000 because fewer people
were able to legally congregate, meaning both canceled
weddings and less money being spent on the generally
smaller weddings that did take place.
e average cost of a wedding rose again in 2021, as
noted, to $22,500. Why did it go up again from the lows
of 2020? A good guess is that there was a sense that
things in certain areas were returning to normal, so
By Andrew Joseph
E
