How to Price a Wedding Arch Without Leaving Money on the Table

The arch is the photo. Every wedding I've done, that's the piece every aunt with a phone shoots. It's also the piece I've watched florist friends quote at $800 because $800 felt like a wedding-arch number.

It is not a wedding-arch number. It is a number we pulled out of the air because the arch felt like one item.

I did the same thing my first season. Built a quote off a round figure, ran the actual stems later, and realized I'd paid myself about $11 an hour on a Saturday I gave up to drive to Birmingham and back.

Build it from the stem up

Every arch should be priced the same way you'd price ten arrangements stacked together. Because that's what it is.

1. Count every stem type. Greenery, focal flowers, accent flowers, filler. Write the cultivar, not just "rose." 2. Get your real cost per stem. Bunch price divided by stems per bunch, plus a 12–15% spoilage buffer. 3. Total your hard costs. Stems plus supplies: wire, oasis, zip ties, foam, tape. 4. Apply your markup. I run 3x on flowers and 1.5x on hard goods. 5. Add labor. Honest hours times your real hourly rate. Minimum $25–35. 6. Add delivery, setup, strike. All of it. Not "I'll round up."

A $800 arch usually needs to be $1,100–$1,400 to actually pay you for the day.

A real example

Garden-style arch, blush and ivory:

- 30 stems of blush garden roses at $2.20/stem = $66 - 20 stems of white lisianthus at $0.90/stem = $18 - 40 branches of eucalyptus at $0.45/stem = $18 - Supplies (foam, wire, zip ties) = $22

Hard cost: $124. At 3x on flowers and 1.5x on supplies: $250 flowers, $33 supplies = $283 in material price. Add 5 hours of design and setup at $35/hr = $175. Delivery: $45.

Real price: $503.

If you quoted that arch at $400, you paid yourself $11/hr on a Saturday you weren't home for breakfast.

The shortcut that actually works

This is where I started using Petal Studio. My wholesale invoice loads in. Per-stem costs are live. I build the arch recipe in the tool, the cost totals itself, and when garden roses jump $0.40 a stem the next week, my recipe knows.

No spreadsheet open on Tuesday morning. No second-guessing what the bunch was last month.

The price conversation

Florists worry the real number will lose the booking. Sometimes it does. The brides shopping purely on price were not going to be a good Saturday for you anyway.

The clients who book a confident, itemized number are the ones who treat your work like work. That's the whole game.

Price the arch right. Everything after that is easier.

*Tired of guessing at arch costs? Start a free Petal Studio trial. No card required. Your wholesale invoice loads in seconds and every arch recipe calculates from live costs.*