S1 E15 - Florist vs Stylist: What’s the Difference (and Do You Need Both?)

As a species, females in general, we're very indecisive.

Very indecisive.

And the other thing as well is if you do want to use fake flowers, people think it saves money.

It doesn't. It doesn't. It's the exact same price.

And the reason for that, I guess, is one, because the quality is not that great. So if you want good quality, it's expensive. But because of the condensation and the climates in Bali, they also don't last very long. And the other thing as well, a lot of people don't realize, is if you're doing like long-running centerpieces and long tables, we get charged by the meter. So it's not like one centerpiece, it's like per meter you're going to pay X, and it could be, depending on the flowers, like $40 a meter. And then we're also paying for things like candles. So when you get a floral quote in, you're not just paying for the flowers. And we've touched on this so many times. If you book in a photographer, you're not just paying for the photographer to come out on the day, you're paying for their experience and the admin, the editing and everything. With a florist, you're not just paying for the florist because everyone's like, oh, that's expensive for a bouquet. And I'm like, it's not just the flowers, babe. You've got to pay for the staff. The floral teams come with like 6 to 10 people.

Oh yeah.

They've got all the equipment. You're hiring vases, you're hiring the arches, you're getting candles. They can't reuse the candles. You've got to buy them. And even like the little things like the buttonholes, like the clips that they get and they're not reusable, and even all the ribbon and the twine and everything that they're using for your bouquet, like, it's the little things that add up. So she bought all the name cards for the wedding home because they all had to be tied with ribbon. So again, it's time-consuming. And we have a puppy at home, little Maple, bless. Maple ate my name cards. Ayu left them unattended on the table for a bit too long and came back and they were—

I said to Ayu, it's kind of like the dog ate my homework, like Hi and welcome back to another episode of Bali Weddings Unveiled. My name is Britta.

Hi, I'm Tristan.

Today we're going to be talking about, um, styling and florals, florals and stylists and what the difference is. So jump in and get excited.

We're having a bit of a giggle because behind the scenes the sound team and we're checking and Camera was supposed to start on me first 'cause Britt is sick and they just went rolling, 3, 2, 1, Britt. So we were like, ah, hello. Anyway, hi, welcome back. So today, as Britt mentioned, we're gonna be running through an episode on basically florals and decor and the difference between a stylist and a florist, which is gonna be a massive budget thing in your wedding because there is a massive difference between the two and what they do and kind of, I guess, how you decorate your wedding day. First of all, I just wanna point out our beautiful flowers from today. We've just come off 5 back-to-back weddings. We completely forgot to order flowers for the studio, but we brought these home from a wedding the other day. They are from— where are they from?

Harry Florist Wedding Concept, I believe. They're kind of a mix of everything.

Yeah. So beautiful flowers. This was from one of our florists that we work with very regularly. So we thought we'd bring them into the studio and brighten up the room a little bit. So anyway, let's get started. So when you're planning your wedding, obviously we've gone through step Step 1 is booking in your key suppliers. Step 2 is catering, and now we're moving on to florals and decor, which is the biggest part of the wedding planning journey with us. So one of the first questions we do talk to clients about, and this is very briefly touched on in the inquiry stages, flowers and decor and how much their budget is and what the vision is. When we hit the flowers and decor, we do kind of get an idea for the vision and then we discuss, are we going to go with a florist or are we going to go with a stylist? So what's the difference?

Florist is just one of our kind of local florists, I guess.

It's—

we do a lot of the handiwork behind the scenes. We are going back and forth with quotes and mood boards, and if you change your florals 2 months out, then we do a whole flip of everything. So we're kind of the main person handling all aspects of your wedding, essentially, when it comes down to decor. With a stylist, we kind of give that job to someone else to kind of beautify, and they give you a very like intricate mood board, like exactly what flowers they're using and the colors and the color tones. And they can do a lot more than just florals, obviously, like they can do furniture and lighting, all the aesthetics basically. Yeah, to make sure it all ties in nicely, which is exactly what we can do.

Yeah.

Just some people like to kind of go in a different direction.

I think so. If they're a bit more of an A bride. Type A bride. It's a much more detailed process. So when you come on board with Barley Brides, I would say 90% of the weddings that you see have been styled by Barley Brides. So we do all the styling, we do all the flowers, we do absolutely every aspect. But if you have a particular vision or if you have no vision but a big budget and you know you just want your wedding to be beautiful, but you can't quite figure it out, We expect most of our brides to come to us with an idea, at least. Color scheme, this is what we like, this is our budget or something. But if you have absolutely no idea, I don't have hours upon hours every single day to go backwards and forwards over your vision and help you figure that out. That is something that you need to figure out. And if you can't, we'll introduce you to a stylist who that is their main job. Their main job is styling and making all the aesthetics for the wedding. So that's not just the flowers, that's, you know, working out the color scheme of the ceremony and what kind of furniture is going to go with the flowers and, you know, programming and stationery. When you move into the cocktail area, what kind of furniture are we going to set up? Special bars? So it's a really detailed process where they will actually help you build your vision. Once your vision is built, they will then actually go out and mock it up. So there'll be like, you know, Photoshop, proper graphic design sort of things where they can show you what it looks like. You can say yes or no, and then you fine tune it. And then they give you the budget. This is how much it's going to cost. You say yes or no, or we need to come down in that area. So one of the last weddings that we did, I worked with Inokai Styling because the bride, had money, first of all. She had quite a very big budget. She just wanted a beautiful wedding. She knew that she wanted it white-themed, which we could have easily done, but she really had no vision in her head of what she wants to look like. And there's only so many times you can go, "Here's white, okay," without spending hours upon hours, which when we're planning your wedding, we do expect you to have some sort of vision. And if not, a colour scheme, we can roll with it, but she was very specific. So I introduced her to a couple of different stylists. We went with Enakai Styling, And I still remember at the end of the wedding planning process, she was like, the aperol cart, I never would have thought of that myself. Because it wasn't in her brain. But what a stylist does is they put lots of ideas into your brain as long as it's within your budget so that every aspect of that wedding ties together. And we do do that, but we do it in a much smaller scale. It's not our full-time job. A stylist's full-time job is creating the look and feel for your wedding. Yeah. So I guess that's probably one of the biggest things there is it's a lot more of a detailed process and it's a second set of hands. Now you will find that with some wedding planning companies, actually quite a few, when you go to them, you only get a stylist. They will never even recommend that you work with a florist independently because that's not their specialty. Their specialty is planning. As a planner, what do we do? We, like, it's such two different jobs, like when you think about it.

So if you, we, when we're doing the styling and decor, like that takes months, months. Like, we've got like a step 3, 4, and 5, which is basically all styling and decor, but you could have up to 6 calls just kind of going back and forth with the styling. It's a very long process.

Yeah, for some people it's not. Some people, they're like, yeah, we trust you, this is what we want, and, or maybe they don't know what they want.

They send us a few photos and then we just roll with it because that's, that's all they want, and we're like, okay, perfect, like, we will do that.

I have a wedding for next month and we've just changed a lot of the color schemes of things. But like, this is how detailed the styling goes into. We're doing a checkered dance floor.

Yeah.

Like it's white and pink checkers. I'm designing a custom phone booth for the audio guestbook. So it's a very detailed process. We can do it.

Yeah.

But the problem is, is I'm not a graphic designer, neither are you. And we don't have unlimited time just to spend on the styling because we're not just doing the styling, we're dealing with all of your suppliers, the sound, the lighting, the AV. The planning role in itself is a very big job. So we don't have unlimited time to spend on styling. We typically will do it over a 4-month period where it's an hour phone call and then the behind the scenes on it. If you need a lot more attention than that, you're gonna need a stylist. So I think the biggest thing, let's go through first, is what you get when you get the Bali Brides experience compared to another company. There are some companies I know that we work with a bit and we've known for a long time. They don't do the florals or the decor whatsoever in-house. It's you onboard them, they will hire a stylist. Biggest thing there, it's gonna be cost.

Oh yeah.

So that's gonna be a big price tag. So if you're on a budget, you ideally do wanna work with someone that can do basic styling themselves.

And I mean, if you're going with a stylist, there's typically, they've got a minimum spend.

Yeah.

And then they've also got their styling fee.

They've got a styling fee and then obviously all the flowers, decor, everything on top. So it's kind of like, well, not having a planner 'cause they don't do any planning whatsoever. They just manage the styling aspect. So there is a difference between a planner and a stylist and some companies both, offer both in-house. I know a couple of other companies that 100% do the styling in-house. They don't really tend to work with stylists.

Yeah.

Although one of our friends' company, they do work with the stylist occasionally, even though they have an in-house stylist. So it is a very specific role. So when you book in with Barley Brides, we obviously do all the planning start to finish. We go through your suppliers, the catering, absolutely everything, but we also can do basic styling. So when I say basic, check out Instagram, like It's not basic, but we can do a lot of the aspects as long as you trust us.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest word there, trust.

Yeah. So what we will ask for though from the couples, we want input, like send me a few different pictures of bouquets and then we'll have a very detailed call about those bouquets. So for a bride, you might just send me a photo and go, I love these flowers right here on this table. And for you, that's a very simple, I love it. The detail that we then go into is like, okay, great. What about the vase? There's a vase here. Do you like that vase? No. Okay, we've got yellow flowers, we've got purple flowers, we've got burgundy flowers, we've got orange flowers. Do you like all of those colors? Oh, actually, I don't really like orange. Great, we're going to scrap the orange flowers. There's a lot of stem here, a lot of greenery, a lot of pointy flowers. There's a lot of round flowers. Do you like both shapes? Oh, maybe not. And we basically pick your brain apart. Yeah, to what you like. And then once we do that for one photo, we move on to the next photo. Tell me what you love about this one. And once we've got your vision, then we go, okay, great, so we want the aspects of this bouquet together with this bouquet, but with the shape of that bouquet, but with the the ribbons from that bouquet, perfect. And we do that for every single aspect of photos that you've saved. So whether it's the table decor or the ceremony arch, is it the shape you like? It's quite a detailed process, but with a stylist, you just send them one photo and they'd create a whole mood board and go, this is what I think ties in together. Whereas for us, we want to know your opinion on everything rather than taking control of that conversation. So you do need to have some general ideas. When we have all that information, In our heads, it's all in here.

Yeah.

We know what florists are going to work best with your theme, with the kind of flowers you want and the look you're going for. Yeah. So we will then set up 1 to 2 meetings with florists. We will email them and say, this is what we're looking for. Can you give us a rough price gauge of what that's going to be looking like? Then we will come back to you and say, this is roughly what you're looking at cost-wise. Is that doable? Do we need to come down? And we kind of go backwards and forwards on price. And then we set a meeting.

Yeah.

And those meetings are typically the florist will come to the office or we'll go to them or we'll catch up for a coffee somewhere and we then explain your vision to the florist. Because a lot of them, they don't speak great English.

I've got a meeting with Harry tomorrow.

I mean, Harry speaks pretty good English, but there's a lot of things that are lost in translation sometimes because Indonesian language is a lot less words, if that makes sense. Like there's a small alphabet, there's less words. So for what would take me 2 sentences to explain to you would be 3 words in Indonesian. So we always take take a meeting and we tend to get one of the local planners on board or one of the local assistants to sit side by side with us and we explain the vision. This is what they liked. They liked the pointy yellow flowers. They like the orange flower, but they don't like the shape of that. They want it more rough textures and more gardeny vibe. So we go through and we have very detailed conversations and we go backwards and forwards and we build a basic mood board. And the mood board's not going to say exactly what you're going to have on the wedding tables, but it's going to go, we like this with that and that and that. And then on the physical wedding day, we will micromanage. And I'm not loving that word right now because that's being used as an insult recently towards me of like, why are you micromanaging this? Sorry, babies, but it's your wedding. Okay. If I have to micromanage a florist or my team to make sure that wedding day is absolutely perfect, I'm going to. You can't wing it. You can't guess it. So we do go in and we micromanage the florist. I had a wedding on Monday and the bouquet came to me. I was like, nope, too small, add more flowers. Then it came to me the second time and I was like, and I looked at the photos and I was like, nah, it needs more shape over here, it's too rounded shape. And I sent that bouquet back 3 times, and then I took it to the bride to get her approval. So we're very hands-on on the day. However, when I worked with Innerkai Styling, my day was so easy.

So easy.

I literally oversaw the setup of everything, checked in and out of the chapel, set up the sound, the decor, sound checks, like all the standard things. I had nothing to do with those flowers and decor. Like Kylie just She came in, she knew the vision, she managed all of that.

Yeah.

Which was great. But also for me, I was a little bit lost because I'm like, what do I do? I'm so used to going backwards and forwards and checking everything. But that's what they had, that one person there just to manage the decor. So I got to manage every other aspect of the wedding, the guests and all the bits and pieces. So that was really good. What do you feel like? What would— if you were getting married, would you use just a florist or would you be going with a stylist and why?

I think I'd be going with a stylist.

Yeah.

I think I'm really liking it lately. Well, I think probably just from my last wedding with Sarita, Arty, like even though he just managed the flowers, but that was just so helpful because he understood her vision.

Yeah.

And while I could have done that and I still kind of, she honestly, she actually didn't have any meetings with him.

Like I just went to him. I think the bigger the wedding, yeah, the better it is to have a stylist so the planner can focus on the logistics, because that's what we do on the day. We are covering all the logistics.

Exactly.

Managing the florals and decor, we still do it, but having just someone dedicated to make sure your vision comes to life.

It's kind of just having, like, even though they're not wedding planning, but it's just having that second person there. It's like, okay, you're split into the prettiness, all right, you're doing the logistics. Like, yeah, I, I like that split.

I do as well. The only thing I don't like about it is I do feel very lost because I'm like, I'm normally such a hands-on person that I'm like, oh, it's beautiful, I created that. And then when a stylist comes, I'm like, oh, they did that, that was them. So it is a really nice aspect to have. I look, I'm so torn on this aspect. I think it really does come down to budget and how trusting you are.

As a planner, I love the styling part of it. Like I love putting all like the furniture and the tablecloths and gold cutlery and placemats and napkins, just putting it kind of all together and then seeing it on the wedding brief, I'm like, yeah, that works.

Yeah, it looks beautiful.

It's nice in my brain.

It's visually pleasing. Yeah. And I think again, like we touched on this before when we had, uh, Arshad and Lydia Wren, the difference between like, there's so many wedding planners out there, and the difference in tiers is going to be obviously the experience and there's all sorts of things, but I think one of the biggest factors as well is How hands-on is your wedding planner going to be? How visionary are they? Like, are they a creative person naturally? Because we do get a lot of clients that just come to us and they're like, I like the color black and I want to incorporate that in my wedding somehow. Where? I don't know, I trust you. And I had this a few years ago and we did this beautiful wedding at Prairie Temple Hill and I had a couple of black flowers in the bride's main bouquet and we used black tablecloths instead of white. So very untraditional, but the pops of black with the beautiful florals on the table, then it like, it just was gorgeous. So pretty. And then even like, you know, I love doing the tablescaping, beautiful napkins, beautiful placemats. I've got my wedding that's very pink themed. We've got all beautiful tableware. So some wedding planners, they don't have a vision. They're not very creative. They're very planner.

Yeah.

So you could go, I want this bouquet and this furniture and this table centerpiece and this thing and they don't match and they won't bother to tell you that. Yeah. Okay, great. That's what you want. We're going to stick out. They're like an order taker. And we've just had this big conversation. Like all they're doing is going, yep, great. That's what you want. And they're not giving you any feedback or direction, which can make it really difficult when you're planning your wedding.

Yeah.

And I've just had this with one of my client takeovers. So I've just taken over a bunch of weddings from one of our other wedding planners. And when we got to the styling and decor, I was like, great, we've got lots of photos here. 'You have one couch.' She's like, 'Yeah, I like to look at that couch, so that's been booked for cocktail hours.' Like, 'You have 100 people.' And they're like, 'Yes.' I was like, 'One couch is not going to cut it. We need at least 6 standing tables and we need some cocktail furniture. And honestly, babes, the color of that couch doesn't match your flowers. I'm happy to order it for you, but can I give you some other suggestions?' And she was like, 'Oh my gosh, yes, please do.' And so now I've pulled up all the furniture catalogs next to her florals. We've shared screen and I'm like, 'Right, 'This furniture matches perfectly with these flowers and with your ceremony chairs, so I recommend this.' And she's like, 'Great, fantastic.' A lot of wedding planners won't do that. They'll just go, 'You've got one couch and then that's what you've ordered on the day. That's not my problem because that's all you ordered.' Ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But I think this is the big thing when you look for a wedding planner. Are they going to help you with the styling aspects and how involved are they going to be in that process? Or do you have to physically go pick from 100 catalogues? I just had a conversation with one of our newer planners a couple of weeks ago, and you could see when we were going through ceremony styling, the bride really, not that she didn't care, but she was like, that's just what I like and I, whatever. Like you guys will make it pretty. And then this planner started going into full details of like, okay, so what cocktail furniture do you like? And how many tables do you want? And have you looked through the catalogues? I'm like, can you not see that she's already overwhelmed with the ceremony choices? Don't ask her. There's hundreds of pieces of furniture to go from. Just shortlist it, like shortlist it down and say, here's a couple of furniture ideas. Do you have any preference? I think this one looks really good. You just need to sometimes hold people's hands and walk them through the process.

Oh yeah, for sure. The amount of times just, I don't know, what do you think, Britta? I'm like, well, I think this. I think that as well. Let's do that. Like, it's just sometimes you just need to give them that little push.

And I think it's not even push. Like, as a, as a species, females in general, we're very indecisive. Very indecisive. Right? Like I use this as a bit of a training exercise for the team, especially in the sales and the early processes or in a lot of decision-making. Like if I said to you right now, Britta, and we are going out for dinner tonight, I've picked, what do you want for dinner tonight? What would you tell me?

Give me the menu so I can have a look.

Give you the menu. But like if I just said to you, actually it's lunchtime, where should we go for lunch, Britta? Very hard. But if I just from the top of my brain and I was like, Britta, I'm really hungry. We've got the Vietnamese place down the road, or should we go to the pub and have a sneaky ginger beer and a pizza?

Healthy life, unhealthy life.

But you could make a decision, right?

Yeah.

Because you're not having to think about it. So when it comes to flowers and decor, I'm like, if someone's— if I can see that they're really indecisive on a phone call, I wouldn't even bother to walk them through every single aspect because I can already see that you're getting overwhelmed. So I would be going like, I I had this a few weeks ago and the bride goes, "I don't know, I just want a white bouquet." Like, I know what kind of arch I want, I don't know about the bouquet. I was like, "Great." So I've literally pulled up Google, searched white bouquet, and then I've narrowed it down to the flowers I know are available in Bali. And I said, "Are you watching your screen?" She goes, "Yep." And I dumped 4 photos and said, "Here's 4 selections I found." She goes, "Oh, I really like that one." I was like, "Great, delete, delete, delete. Happy with that one? Any changes?" "No, we love it." And you need someone that can give you that direction. So if you're not using a stylist, you need a wedding planner that can obviously walk you through that step by step. And that's a really important thing to know from day one.

That's what I've just done for one of my brides towards the end of this year. But yeah, she had all this furniture on her wedding brief and I was looking at it. She's only got like 30 guests. I'm like, we do not need this much. Like it was probably like 15 pieces of furniture.

Wow.

For cocktail hour. I was like, babe, we don't need this much. She was like, oh, you don't think?

I'm like, no. I've got that with one of my upcoming weddings. They gave me a whole document of all the furniture they wanted. And then I got to the bottom and it was like, glassware. I was like, your bar is going to provide you glassware. They wanted to order bars, and I was like, I know we're already over budget, so can I just make some suggestions? They're like, sure. I was like, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap, scrap.

Yeah.

Yes, we'll keep this. I think we need this. And then we just rearrange their whole spreadsheet to fall within budget. But I think it's really important that you do check at the beginning of the wedding planning process, like, how involved would you be with the styling? Because a wedding planner is not a wedding stylist. They're very different roles.

Yeah.

But if you've got someone that can do both, that's fantastic. But I think it's really important you check because that might be a surprise cost for you later down the track. So just to put it into perspective, I have had quite a few weddings in the last month. One of those weddings, I used a florist.

Yeah.

Similar numbers, I used a stylist. The price difference is massive.

Yeah.

Because realistically, the stylist still works with the florist, but they're very hands-on, but they're creating mood boards. That's a very detailed job. So they're going to have, first of all, their styling fee. Then they're going to be suggesting probably a lot more items than you might actually need because they're trying to create the whole vision. I mean, they do a fantastic job. There's no lies about that. But the pricing that you're paying for that premium service is a lot more. So as an example, the wedding that I just used a florist, I think my floral bill was about $4,500 just for flowers.

Yeah.

My stylist bill was $22,000.

Yeah.

But that covered the furniture, the lighting, the stationery, everything. So if I added everything up for my other wedding, it was probably closer to like $7,000, $8,000 including all those things, because the stylist will go, okay, great, now that we've done that, these are the lights that you need, and I think you need some chandeliers, and this is the stationery. So it was a lot more detailed, but I probably could have done it for half the price. But this particular client obviously had the money, and they were more than happy to pay the fee. So it's also about what you're happy to pay for.

For sure, definitely. And I think we also need to touch on there's a lot of local companies out there that do the styling and everything, but they provide fake florals. And I actually sent an email to one of my clients for July just because she was looking at all these different other— when I've already got basically everything sorted. She was like, oh, but now I'm looking at this. I'm like, no. Because these other companies, they did a lot of fake florals.

And I was just like— I think we probably need to explain why, because fake florals are used worldwide. Yeah, you were getting married in an underdeveloped country compared to the rest of the world. Our quality of fake flowers here is shit.

It's terrible.

I can spot a fake flower from like hundreds of meters away. I would walk into a wedding venue, and this happened a couple times, I've walked into a wedding venue, I'm like, why are there fake flowers in the arch? You can spot them. The colors are not natural. Yep, they like, they're just horrendous.

They're like, you get the white fake florals and they are Stark white. Yeah, like, you don't get florals that color.

I just had a wedding actually, and I was looking at the photo of the bouquet compared to the flowers, and when I talked to the bride, I could see her face, and I was like, you gotta remember, you've provided me a photo that's probably heavily photoshopped. Like, this is not— flowers aren't that white. So hers were creamy colored, and you could just see she was like, but I wanted white. And I was like, I can spray paint them. Yeah, but that's a photoshopped photo. And I think that's also something people don't realize when they send through flower inspos. I had a wedding a few years ago very bright, vibrant florals, and she was disappointed on the day because they weren't as bright in real life. And I'm like, you cannot provide photos that have been photoshopped or edited and then expect them to be exactly the same.

The world of AI right now, like, it's ridiculous.

It's killing me because I see so many pretty things and I'm like, oh, it's not even real. Yeah. I don't know if you've seen it, but there's a beautiful, like, whimsical arch that seems like it's floating at the moment, and it was created by AI. And I'm like, oh, it's so pretty but not achievable in real life.

Yeah. So yeah, just the fake flower. I just, that's where I put my foot down. I'm like, no, I just, I can't do it.

If you're getting married in Australia or another country and they had high quality fake flowers, sure.

Sure.

But I have never seen good quality fake flowers here and we've worked on hundreds of weddings, like literally hundreds, and I've never seen good quality. So it is, it's not like compulsory, but I'm, I said I've been working with a new florist upcoming because another planner booked them. And I said, look, I just want to make it very clear, I will not allow fake flowers.

Yeah.

Unless it's a filler for the back of the arch and not visible because they're not good quality. But do you know what I'm loving lately? The dried florals.

Me too.

I really like them.

I really love them. Harry's been using them a lot. Sarita used them.

We've got a bunch in the office.

Yeah. They're such good fillers.

Yeah.

Oh, I love them.

So a lot of them, I don't know where they're getting theirs, but we obviously had, was it the Bespoke Boys? Remember those guys that came in from Sydney? They started their own business here with the artificial and they're importing all dried florals into the country, painting them whatever color they need to be. The quality is gorgeous. They're great fillers. And reusable. And reusable. So it's not like dried florals, like pampas grass, like it's proper full florals. And I'll put some photos up here of some of the ones that we've used in the past. Great fillers and like just so much nicer. Yeah. And the other thing as well is if you do want to use fake flowers, people think it saves money. It doesn't.

It doesn't. It's the exact same price.

And the reason for that, I guess, is one, because the quality is not that great. So if you want good quality, it's expensive. But because of the condensation and the, the climates in Bali, they also don't last very long.

No.

So it's not like you can use fake flowers for years and years and it's a big money saver. Yeah, yeah. Now the other part of, I guess, the florals and the styling is going to be things like tableware, lighting, furniture hire. We work with a few very great companies in Bali. Furniture hire is probably one of the most underestimated costs when it comes to a wedding.

Yeah, because imagine if you have 100 people, that's 100 chairs. That is what— how many tables you need to fill them. So round tables, you've got 10, 10 people per table for the round. Long tables, you fit less people on those tables. Well, unless you just use a standalone long table, you can fit— some tables fit 3, some tables fit 4. One on each end, but a lot of people don't do that. They use them as long, massive, yeah.

And yeah, I think furniture, like, I've got a client at the moment and they're like, we need to cut the budget, where can we cut the budget? I'm like, well, all your keys are locked in, catering's locked in, there's not really anywhere I can cut it because you have 170 people. Yeah. And that's the biggest thing. Like I said to them, we can change your ceremony chairs, that'll save you some money. 'cause they've got chairs that are $10 each, so 170 people, that's like $1,700. If I change them to $4 chairs, like whoosh, bill comes right down, but they don't want to do that.

Yeah.

So yeah, you've got to pay for a chair for everybody. Now, if you are a budget-conscious client and you were getting married in a hotel or a restaurant, they do have chairs you can use. You can save a lot of money that way. However, they're ugly. They are.

A lot of hotels just have banquet-style chairs, so they put the white ugly cover over it and then a nice, a nice sash.

Let's put a photo up here of our, one of our first weddings that we did, a couple of photos. And you will see back in the day, because we were getting clients that were on low budgets, and we, we're very open, we will work with all budgets. Yeah, we're not one of these companies that has a minimum spend to work with us. Like, whatever, if you've got a $10,000 budget, $5,000, we will try and work with you. We'll, we'll work with it as long as it's achievable. Don't tell me you've got a $10,000 budget for 100 people and you want a band and a DJ and photo, video, like everything. It's not possible. But we will, within reason, work. So if you're getting married in a hotel, we can You can use their furniture. Is it nice? No. Do I want to share photos on my Instagram of Bali Brides with those photos? No, probably not, to be completely honest. I mean, I'm not saying your wedding is going to be beautiful. It's just not our kind of brand and where we're heading in that direction. We'll still work with you, but yeah, the photos of those chairs are not the prettiest, but it does save you a lot of money. A lot of hotels will also have cocktail tables, white cover, metal ones, whatever they've got. So some of the hotels do already have things that you can use and you can save a lot of money that way. But when you go into a villa, you cannot use any of the furniture.

Yep.

If you have a private venue, we have to hire absolutely everything in. And then there's going to be venues like Wonderland the other day. We had the wedding at Wonderland. What I said to you at midnight, where's my table? Because I personally will order myself and I will pay for it, an altar table and a couple of chairs for me and the team because there's some venues you go into and there's nowhere for my team to sit. We literally sit on the floor.

I said the same thing to Yanti on Sunday because again, purey Wagga One, no table to sit at.

Yeah. So I always order myself a little altar table and a couple of chairs and we just the company pays for it because I want somewhere to sit. Like when you're on party time and I've been on my feet all day, like I need somewhere to sit and just watch everything. I don't want to stand all day.

We're your babysitters.

We're your babysitters. We're watching the kids on the dance floor and keeping an eye on them. So furniture does, like it can add up when you've got a lot of people. So my upcoming wedding, we've got 170 guests. That's 170 chairs times $10. We're then paying for cocktail furniture. So for them, we've got a mixture of tall cocktail tables with stools. But then we also have seated because they've got some elderly guests and they've got people that aren't going to want to be on their feet all day. So we've had to put some couch sets in there and that's probably another $1,000 in items that they've had to order for that amount of people. Then on top of that, we do have to pay delivery and setup fee because it's got to come from the warehouse. It's got to go onto trucks. We need a lot of staff to move it. And then we need staff on standby because after the ceremony, we move the chairs to dinner. And that's not a one-person job. That's normally like a 6-people job to get all the chairs and move it. So we're paying for a team to be on standby for the day. So there are going to be delivery and costs and things like that. And then tables, again, most catering companies, not all, most will provide us tables. Standard banquet tables with a white tablecloth, you know, you know the ones, they're, they're pretty standard. But if you've got a vision for a wooden table or a naked table or a different shape, you're going to have to hire that, have to pay for it, and you're looking at $50 a table. So what you touched on before is a round table, we can put 10 people on there.

Yep.

A long table, if it's coming from Bali Event Hire, we can probably fit 3 to 4 aside depending what kind of chairs you're using. But the problem is, is a round table, we put one centerpiece in the middle, done. Beautiful. For a long table, you need multiple centerpieces. So the flowers are going to be more expensive if you go for long tables. The furniture hire cost is going to be more expensive because we can fit less people on it. So for a wedding of 100, that's easy. That's realistically 9 round tables plus a bridal table. That's 9 centerpieces. That's 9 tables. 100 people with long tables, if you're doing bigger chairs, that's 6 per table. How many tables we now got?

Lots.

Lots. My maths is not mathsing in my head right now. My brain doesn't work. I'm like 10 times 6, that's 60. So we're going to need about 15, 16 tables. You've now got 16, tables to hire, plus realistically 16 times 3, because that's kind of how many floral centerpieces you need on a longer table to make it look pretty. Maybe 2 if you're doing the bare minimum. That's 32 centerpieces instead of 9.

Yep.

The cost, whoosh, straight up.

Like, I've got a wedding coming up, we've got about 50 people, and we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8. Yeah, 8 long tables.

Yeah. And the other thing as well, a lot of people don't realize is if you're doing like long running centrepiece and the long tables, we get charged by the metre. So it's not like one centrepiece, it's like per metre you're gonna pay X, and it could be depending on the flowers, like $40 a metre. And then we're also paying for things like candles. So when you get a floral quote in, you're not just paying for the flowers, and we've touched on this so many times. If you book in a photographer, you're not just paying for the photographer to come out on the day, you're paying for their experience and the admin and the editing and everything. With a florist, you're not just paying for the florist, 'cause everyone's like, oh, that's expensive for a bouquet. And I'm like, it's not just the flowers, babe. You've got to pay for the staff. The floral teams come with like 6 to 10 people.

Oh yeah.

They've got, you know, they've got all the equipment. You're hiring vases, you're hiring the arches, you're getting candles. They can't reuse the candles, so you've got to buy them.

Even like the little things like the buttonholes, like the clips that they get and the—

They're not reusable.

They're not reusable. And even all the ribbon and the twine and everything that they're using for your bouquet. Like it's the little things that add up.

And also the training. Like we are quite big on cross-training and like upskilling the team. And we had a floral workshop a couple of years ago with Ari from Florist Concept. And even to make a flower crown like that took us ages to perfect.

So long.

It's also a lot of training. So you're paying for that skill set as well. So when you're looking into florists and there's different pricing, like I know off the top of my head, a florist that is absolutely freaking incredible, very expensive, but they are very expensive because the quality of flowers and their experience and their knowledge. Like I can guarantee if I gave them a photo of a bouquet, I wouldn't have to fix it 3 times. They would get it first time. So you're paying for a different set of skills. So when you come to me and say, I want this particular florist, why is that $6,000? And you've roughly quoted me 2,000. I'm like, because I can get all that for 2,000 from this florist, but you want the expensive florist.

Yeah.

So it's also you're getting what you pay for experience-wise as well. Any other aspects? Tableware.

Oh yeah, tableware, that, that is a very—

it's my favorite.

I know, there's again, there's so many lookbooks. Like if you look through Bali Tabletop and Semedja and everything, like all the different glassware and plates and— yeah, oh my God, the amount of plates that they have. Charges and placemats, cutlery.

So these are things you don't particularly need to hire. Yeah, because catering again will provide you silver cutlery, white plate, a wine glass, a water glass. Like, you do get these included, but some people are very stylish, like, and that's what a stylist will work with you on is like, okay, great, with your flowers, I think we need to change all the cutlery to gold or whatever, things that you wouldn't have even thought of. So these are also hidden costs that you need to think about.

Yeah.

They don't come for free. You gotta pay for them. And most of these companies, I just actually had a conversation with someone that's like, hi Tristan, sorry, we have a minimum order 'cause we try to order 25 things. Our minimum order, you haven't reached it. So I've had to add more things in just to get it because like I say this all the time, like I always said we'd never do napkins because you hire out napkins for a dollar each and then it costs me $20 to launder them. There's no money in it. So a lot of companies will have minimum spends as well that you have to reach in order to hire items from them. But the tableware is such a big thing because if you are very particular with your look and feel of the wedding, you, you know, have a very clear vision in your head, you need to hire the tableware. So that's the plates, or it could be a charger or a placemat, as you might call it. Maybe you want rose gold cutlery, maybe you want pink water goblets or crystal or something else. Those are all things that you need to hire. And the pricing will vary from like $1 an item to $15 an item.

Oh yeah, the cutlery alone, I think that's like $5 to $6 $90 per piece.

$90K I'm paying for my next wedding. So $9 per set because we need an entrée, main, and dessert cutlery. 'Cause it's not like we can go off to kitchen and reset the table for you. You need all of them. So we're paying $9 a set. Now imagine my client that's got 170 people. We've just gotten rid of all their tableware because we can get it from catering because they've blown their budget. And $9 times 170, like again, we're at almost $2,000. So these are very, not hidden costs, but I think the biggest issue with us with planning weddings is we haven't planned your wedding in full when we talk to you at the beginning.

Oh yeah.

So please don't come to me for my throat halfway through the wedding planning when you tell me you want gold cutlery and you want to change your water goblet to a pink one instead of a clear one. And I'm like, here's an extra $1,000 bill. Oh, I didn't budget for that. You didn't tell me. And I was like, yeah, cause I hadn't planned your wedding yet. I actually did not know that you wanted to change it. We had a picture catering company. We didn't know it was included. So one of the biggest issues I guess we ever have planning a wedding, I can't tell you the exact cost of your wedding until you've planned it because things are going to change.

Like little things you add on, like say a saxophone for party time. Like I think we just touched on it. Like you need, it needs rider equipment.

Yeah.

Like it's those little things that it's like, well, I didn't budget for that. I'm like, yeah, but you wanted it.

Unless you have, when you come to us, if you have your wedding fully planned out and you have your mood board and you know exactly what supplies, yeah, I can give you a cost, but that's part of the planning process. So someone said to me the other day, I jumped on a call with them and we were kind of talking budget. I said, look, this is roughly what we've quoted you, because that's always part of our first call. This is roughly what we've quoted you. What's your actual budget? Do we have wiggle room if we hit a figure you like absolutely can't go over it? So I know in my head so I can kind of guide you backwards.

Yeah.

And they said, look, we've budgeted to go 20% over or under it. And I was like, that's fantastic. Like, at least you've budgeted. So then later on, if you said to me, hey, we actually like, what else can we do for the table? I'm like, great, I think we should add some colored napkins and that's going to elevate it. Maybe let's do a placemat as well. But unless you've picked your catering company, I actually don't know what I'm getting.

Yeah.

So I can't make those decisions or tell you upfront like, well, that catering company comes with gold cutlery already, which there's only one. So I think that's going to be gorgeous, but maybe let's do a different colored napkin. So I think when you are talking to a stylist, this is the other thing, they will throw everything at you that maybe we haven't. Yeah, so the cost will go up because when I'm talking to you about flowers and decor, I'm getting your input. And if you don't tell me you want gold cutlery, I probably won't suggest it unless I think it's really needed. Whereas with a stylist, they are going to go into very great detail. I think you need this calligraphy. I think you need these as your place cards instead. It does become very detailed, but it also does push the cost up because of course, once they dangle that little carrot, you want it.

Yeah. Oh, you want it so bad.

You want everything. My last wedding, it was like, we're going to design this beautiful aperol 'Fruits cart for cocktails.' And I was like, 'I wouldn't have thought about that.' So their brains are just wired to look at every single aspect of the wedding. Anything else we need to cover off on the florals and decor, do you think? I mean, I guess the main thing we wanted to kind of touch on today was just the difference between a florist, a stylist, and what a wedding planner does. So I think the key takeaways is a planner, we're there to plan your wedding, we'll guide you through everything step by step. We can do aspects of styling within Barley Brides. That's not every company. Barley Brides, we do train our team to do that.

And I think we're fantastic at it.

I mean, have you seen our weddings? Of course we're fantastic at it.

They're beautiful.

Do you know who else I really love? And I don't know, some people are like, oh, you know, you're recommending another wedding planner. Desi from BVL Weddings. I swoon over her weddings whenever she posts them. I reply to all of her stories. I'm like, gorgeous. And she is an incredibly talented stylist, which you don't get with a lot of wedding planning companies. Like you get a wedding planner or a stylist. There's not many that are two in one. We are very good at it. I just think she's like, she's really next level and she's just got such an eye for those sorts of things. We've got a very good eye as well, but you need to be aware that not every wedding planning can style. No. So if you were to go with a cheap local planning company, yes, they can style, but when it gets to flowers, like you need to give them very clear instructions on exactly what you want. There's not going to be a lot of input there. They're just going to take your order and go, great, we booked it.

Yeah. And I think we could probably touch on a little bit of stationery as well, because I think that kind of goes hand in hand.

We have a whole stationery setup in our office. No one else has that. We're the only company I know that does our stationery in-house.

Like that is some very tedious stuff. Like, thank God we've got a bit of a team that helps us behind the scenes, Robbie and Ryan.

Let's try and get some photos up here of the boys doing stationery. So we have in the office Cricut machine, boards, acrylics. But when you do a welcome sign with stickers, I don't think you understand that our team is literally like hand cutting it and then putting it down and on the floor, getting out literally on the floor, and just—

it takes them hours.

And then I can talk about this now. So we had 5 back-to-back weddings in a row this week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I think every single one we did the stationery. When I say in-house, there are still things that we have to get from printing companies to bring them in. But the team were very busy. And so Ayu, who has been working in admin with us for the last 8 weeks and just basically extra hands, she wanted to help Robbie, but she's also my nanny. And now that we're coming to wedding season, she's going to go back to just looking after my son full-time. That she wanted to help Robbie because she could see that he was really busy with stationery. So she bought all the name cards for the wedding home because they all had to be tied with ribbon. So again, it's time consuming. And she brought them all home and we have a puppy at home, little Maple, bless. Maple ate my name cards. I left them unattended on the table for a bit too long and came back and they were—

I said to IU, it's kind of like the dog ate my homework.

Like, remember during COVID Buddy ate my vaccination certificate? Yeah. I've literally got a video of me waving it in his face like, "Is this you?" And he ate both mine and Christian's. And of course you needed them to travel. I was like, so yeah. And this is the other thing when it comes to stationery, sometimes people are like, "That's so expensive for that." I'm like, "Do you know how long it takes?" Like, yes, it's just printed bits of paper, but it's going to take my team probably an hour and a half to 2 hours physically to sit down and tie the ribbons or cut it all out or put the stickers on. Like it's, you're not just paying for the print, you're paying for the time behind the scenes as well.

And I think it's It's like when you're a couple of weeks out from the wedding, I got an email in yesterday saying that 2 people have potentially dropped out from this wedding. We've already done a lot of your stationery.

I got the exact email yesterday and we actually had calligraphied her seating chart with a calligrapher. And I was like, it's done. Do you want to pay again to get it redone?

Exactly. I'm like, it's done. Like, and it happens every single time. And I probably, give me a wedding that people haven't dropped out last minute. Like, I'm sorry, but it happens every single wedding.

I would say like 80% of them.

I feel like it's been all of mine.

My biggest thing is like, if they drop out, it's not a big deal. But my biggest thing is when they change the seating chart. This person's now on change table 2, which happened one of the weddings last week. I'm like, so we physically have to stand at the seating plan and be like, just checking what table you're at. What was your name? Oh, you're actually on table 2 now. Sorry. It's embarrassing for me because I feel like your guests don't know that you are the one that sent us the seating chart. They think we did it. And they're looking at me like, you fucking idiot.

You're an idiot.

We had that wedding last year. Remember the bride forgot, completely forgot about 4 guests and they were family members. And so they go to sit down, they're like, we're not on there. And I'm like, what do you mean you're not on there? And then the family were coming to us and like, they're our friends. This is embarrassing. Why aren't they on there? And I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. All your guests. So I've literally gone to the bride and be like, hey, like, these 4 people, first of all, were they invited? And she was like, oh shit. And I'm like, thank gosh we always pre-order extra chairs. Yeah. And when we order tableware, because we did have tableware, that when we order, always order extra. So we had to go down and put them on, but there was no name tag for them. And I think maybe we were 2 napkins short because there were 4 people. Yeah, we ordered 2. But like, that's like, you just need to be a bit more organized.

Yeah.

And you have to be aware that, yeah, it's not just when you pay for items. And this is, I think, the biggest discussion we have to have. Like, you're not just paying for that item. Like, not, oh, oh, my welcome sign's $40. That's really expensive. Okay, but great. We've had to order your welcome sign. We've had to go pick it up and physically bring it into the office. Yeah. You've then got a team that are putting it together. We also spell check it because as much as I love the locals, like English is not their first language. So the amount of times that I get a bar menu in, and even though I've sent to proof, B-E-E-R, it comes back B-I-R, Indonesian spelling. I'm like, no, it's wrong. So yeah, there's also, you kind of factor in for that as well. And the time spent behind the scenes running out to pick it up and then bringing it out to the wedding.

And if you are very adamant that we need a new seating chart and everything because you've had 5 guests pull out, like, I'm sorry, but you need to pay for that reprint.

Yeah.

Like that's not—

This is also something that the stylists do. So when you work with a wedding planner, we've got Canva. That's what we use. We'll design, like send us over the design or we'll send you a stationery lookbook and say, please pick your welcome sign. Fonts are all preset. We can change the wording, no problems whatsoever. But if you're going to be going backwards and forth, like move that half a millimeter to the left, I want this specific font because I used it on my invitation. So we got to pay for that or use Photoshop. You need a stylist to do that. Or we're going to have to onboard a graphic designer to do your stationery, and that's going to cost you a lot more money. I know one particular stylist that we work with, the welcome signs that we do, we charge $50 typically for a standard A1 size if it's just on normal material, not acrylic. They're charging $200 for the same thing. So our pricing is really cheap, really good. But then the problem with us being so cheap is when we do onboard a stylist, they're like, why are their fees so expensive? And I'm like, because it's actually a lot of time. We're just lucky that we have a big team and we can do a lot of it in-house, or we just have a runner on standby to drive to and from places to go pick stuff up for us. Yeah. Amazing. Well, that's all kind of what we're going to cover off on today, was just kind of the florals and the decor aspect. So as we've mentioned before, we're going to take you through the wedding planning process step by step. So we're probably going to touch on flowers and decor and styling a little bit more in other episodes when we get some companies in to have a chat to us. But key things for today, Planning, florist, stylist, 3 separate roles.

Yep.

Very different. Chat to your wedding planner about it, but also factor in for the costings of, you know, if you do have a particular florist in mind, it might be a lot more expensive than what your planner's got in mind because they know all the different florists on the island. Definitely. Amazing. Well, thanks for joining us for another episode. We will see you in 2 weeks for another episode of Barley Wedding Sunvale. Woo! Yay!