Nearly every wedding florist prices from a spreadsheet: list the recipe, multiply the stems by a per-stem price, apply a markup, add a labour percentage. It is quick, it encodes recipes nobody else has, and for a studio whose events are similar in shape it works. The two answers separate at one specific point — the sheet prices stems, and a wholesaler sells bunches — and this page is about where that matters and where it does not.
A recipe markup spreadsheet is the right tool for holding your recipes and turning them into a number fast. It is the accumulated knowledge of your studio, and no calculator replaces it. What it does not do on its own is convert a stem count into a purchase — because a purchase happens in whole bunches, and a spreadsheet cell does not know a variety's bunch size unless you make it.
This calculator takes the same recipe and buys it: it adds the shrink allowance to the stem count, rounds each line up to whole bunches, marks up what was actually bought, prices design and on-site labour by the hour, and reports the gross margin. It also reports what the per-stem basis would have quoted, so the difference between the two methods is a figure rather than an argument.
| Question | Where to answer it |
|---|---|
| What is in this design, and how many stems? | Your spreadsheet. That is what it is for, and this calculator takes the answer as input. |
| What will the wholesale invoice actually say? | This calculator — it rounds each line to whole bunches instead of pricing loose stems. |
| How much does the shrink allowance really cost? | This calculator — the allowance enters the stem count before the bunch rounding, so it is always a purchasable quantity. |
| What should I charge for a wedding like the last one? | Either one — if the shape is similar and your sheet is tuned, the sheet is faster. |
| Is this install-heavy event priced for the hours it takes? | This calculator's hourly labour lines, next to the percentage rule for comparison. |
| Is the margin on this proposal where I want it? | This calculator — it subtracts only the cash that leaves the studio and reports the margin against your target. |
Take a recipe line calling for 85 garden roses from a variety that ships in bunches of ten, at $38 a bunch. A spreadsheet multiplies 85 by the per-stem price of $3.80 and gets $323. The wholesaler sends nine bunches — ten, once an 8% shrink allowance is added — and invoices $380. The $57 difference is not an error in either method; it is the cost of the stems the design does not use, which somebody pays for either way.
Across a five-variety recipe that difference was $135 on the worked example this calculator opens with. Applied at a 3.5× markup, it is $472.50 of quoted price — because a markup multiplies whatever cost basis it is given, and a stem-count basis is smaller than the invoice. That is the whole of the disagreement, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.
Nothing here says or implies that a recipe markup spreadsheet is a bad way to price a wedding. It is a different job: a spreadsheet stores and multiplies a recipe, and this calculator converts that recipe into a purchase. Studios that already encode bunch sizes in their sheets are doing the same thing this page describes, and will find the two answers agree.
It is fast, it is yours, and it holds the one thing no tool can supply — your actual recipes, built up over seasons of real weddings. For a studio whose events are similar in shape, a sheet that multiplies stems by a markup and adds a labour percentage produces a defensible number in a couple of minutes, and there is nothing wrong with that.
On what the flowers cost. A sheet multiplies the recipe's stem count by a per-stem price; a wholesaler sells bunches, so the studio pays for whole bunches whether the design uses them or not. The two agree exactly when every line divides evenly into its bunch size, and they diverge on every line that does not. The markup then multiplies the difference, so a modest gap in cost becomes a larger gap in the quoted price.
You can, and many studios do — but a flat percentage is right only by coincidence on any given event, because the rounding waste depends on how each line's stem count sits against its bunch size, not on the size of the event. A recipe that happens to divide evenly gets padded for nothing; one that lands just over a bunch boundary on four lines is still short. A percentage is a guess at a figure that is exactly computable.
Because the share-of-flowers rule assumes hours track stems, which they do on a bouquets-and-centrepieces wedding and do not on an install. An arch or a hanging piece takes hours and comparatively few stems, and a late strike takes hours and no stems at all. Pricing those by the hour and reporting the percentage rule alongside shows the gap instead of hiding it — neither figure is forced on you.
No. Nothing leaves your browser. The calculator this page links to runs entirely on your own device; nothing you enter is uploaded.