When you are planning your wedding bouquet, you may find yourself charged a premium for some of the flowers, particularly gardenias and stephanotis.
This is NOT because it's a wedding and florists are trying to rip you off. This pair of classic wedding flowers are a little bit different from most other flowers in the way we have to buy them and work with them and this will add to the cost of whatever they're used in.
This is how gardenias come packed - 3 blooms, no stems, with a foliage collar (which might be either real foliage or fake), packed in one plastic wrapped box.
This is how stephanotis comes packed - 25 blooms, on inch long stems, in a cellophane box.
We don't get any say in how many blossoms we buy - if you want gardenias you have to buy 3 flowers and 25 for the stephanotis. As a bride, you will find yourself paying for all of the flowers whether or not you use them.
So a good florist will tell you that if you want the groom's boutonniere to made out of stephanotis, that you should try to find a way to use the rest of the flowers, either in your bouquet, or perhaps in corsages. The same holds true with the gardenias.
You'll also note, that unlike almost every other flower, these two don't have stems! Or at least not enough stem to be of much use.
These flowers are always wired and taped to create a usable stem. The beauty of wire and tape (which FYI is how all bridal bouquets were made for years and years) is that you now have a stem that can be bent into any position you need.
The downside of wired and taped stems is the additional labor it takes to make a stem for each bloom. You're going to pay extra for that. It adds a lot of time to the construction of a bridal bouquet, and every step that adds time in labor, also adds to the price.
Gardenias and stephanotis are gorgeous, classic wedding flowers!
Only you can decide - are they worth the price?
