Let’s get a jump on next year.
Technically I’m a few weeks early for a post-mortem on our event season, but you and I are planners. So here it is: two predictions for where the wedding floral industry is headed.
Spoiler: I will not be sharing a color palette, trending flower, or new ceremony arch shape (plot twist: there aren’t any). What I will tell you is this:
1. Consolidation Is Coming
The cost of doing business is up across the board.
Materials: up.
Labor: up.
Insurance, rent, software, tech: also up.
At least trucking has stabilized (remember 2021, when you couldn’t rent a reefer to save your life?).
Meanwhile, more florists entered the market post-Covid to meet the pent-up demand for events. The U.S. floral industry ballooned from $57B in 2021 to $72.8B in 2023. But anecdotal signs suggest 2024 may have been a contraction year.
Greater competition + higher overhead = thinner margins
And thinner margins mean many solo or micro studios will either close… or consolidate.
Here’s why consolidation makes sense:
Shared overhead (insurance, labor, tech, trucks)
Reduced redundancy (one proposal, one RFP, one Canva team)
Access to infrastructure, capital, and clients
You can build your own flywheel, or join someone else's.
The smartest freelancers I know are going in-house. The savviest 1–2 person studios are folding into larger design firms. There’s even a term for it: acquihire — when a studio brings an existing team in as a unit. Think Shannon Leahy and her design house model. It’s already happening.
2. Comprehensiveness > Maximalism
A little tough love: slapping flowers on every surface isn’t design.
It’s panic.
It’s a hammer looking for nails.
Sure, “more is more” has its moments. But if I had a dollar for every time the word contemporary showed up in a client brief? Let’s just say, maybe less is more.
Our studio regularly encourages clients to remove floral line items.
Why? Because floral isn’t the answer to every problem. Sometimes it’s lighting. Or a custom structure. Or negative space. We’re all trying to build a beautiful world. But the answer isn’t always more. It’s better.
So what does better look like?
Think Like a Design Department
This is where the future gets exciting.
At our studio, we lean hard into curiosity. It’s our edge. That curiosity has led us here:
A painter-slash-installation-artist-slash-husband → now handles our in-house artwork and fabrication
A Creative Producer with a childhood dream of fashion → now prototyping linens, shade structures, chair scrunchies, and soft goods for event environments
We didn’t hire for a résumé. We made space for imagination.
We’re calling this little skunkworks our “soft studio.” We’re building from scratch. Experimenting. Making mistakes. Getting back up. That’s the actual lifeblood of any creative business.
(Also: it’s very fun.)
So What Now?
You don’t have to become a giant agency. But you do need to look up from your flower order and think about where your skills and studio are headed.
You’ll hear “no” a lot. You might fail nine times out of ten. But when it lands?
It’s magic.
The flower game is changing.
And it might just take a whole art department to keep us in it.
Need any poets? 😘