In the wedding industry, there’s a phrase that gets thrown around with a confidence that has always slightly baffled me: “It’ll be great exposure.”
It’s usually followed by a request for heavily discounted work, or no pay at all, dressed up as an opportunity you’d be foolish to pass up. Early in my career, I said yes.
More than once, if I’m being honest.
I said yes because I wanted to grow, because imposter syndrome has a way of making you feel like you haven’t quite earned the right to charge properly yet, and because on paper, some of those opportunities genuinely seemed like they could go somewhere.
They rarely did.
A corporate event came with a promise of future work if they landed a major contract. My designs helped them win the pitch. I know because they told me so, while standing in the middle of my flowers. Then they took those same designs, found someone else to recreate them for free, dangled the same promise of future work, and moved on.
An industry colleague’s wedding at a dream venue was pitched to me as a fully documented editorial experience, the kind of work that would sit squarely within my creative direction. I discounted my rate to make the budget work for them, trusting that the creative freedom and the images would justify the difference. As the date got closer, the brief shifted. The creative freedom I’d been offered quietly disappeared, and I spent the day doing work that didn’t represent me. Imported roses en masse, nothing of the nuance I’d been brought in for. I still haven’t seen a single photograph.
There was a brand activation agreed on a contra basis, with tags and a blog feature promised and never delivered.
There was a low-budget yet logistically-complex wedding I took on partly to work alongside photographers I admired, where the couple ended up refusing anyone permission to share the images.
I don’t tell these stories with resentment.
I made those decisions, and I understand why I made them. Each time, the logic was there on paper. Each time, I walked away having given weeks, if not many, many months, of my time and energy with very little to show for it.
What I want to talk about is what actually goes into this work, because I think it’s genuinely misunderstood, and that misunderstanding is at the root of why doing it in exchange “for exposure” feels like a reasonable thing to ask.
Before a single flower is ordered, there are weeks, months, if not over a year of admin: emails, proposals, calls and meetings, sourcing conversations, supplier negotiations, logistics.
Then there’s the flower sourcing itself, which is not as simple as ordering online. Flowers are perishable, seasonal, and wildly unpredictable. A variety I’ve specified can fail at the market the day before or day of a wedding. A trusted grower can have a bad season. What looks certain on a mood board requires constant contingency thinking to actually deliver. That problem-solving happens quietly, behind the scenes, and it never stops.
Then there are the actual costs of running a business. Insurance, a vehicle/vehicles, refrigeration, tools, subscriptions, education, staff, the hours spent on unbillable work between jobs.
None of that disappears because a job is “free.”
It just means I’m absorbing it.
And that’s before we get to the thing that costs most: time away from paying clients. Every discounted job, every contra arrangement, every “it’ll be worth it” commitment sits in a calendar slot that could have been filled by someone who values the work properly. That’s the very black and white reality of running a business, and why the risk needs constant assessment.
But here’s what I think matters most, and it goes beyond any one florist’s bottom line:
When creative work is consistently undervalued, it changes what the industry looks like to the people booking it. Couples start to see floristry as a ‘nice-to-have’ rather than a skilled trade.
They wonder why quotes vary so wildly without understanding that the ones at the bottom are often unsustainable, built on someone absorbing costs they shouldn’t be absorbing.
They don’t realise that what they’re paying for isn’t just flowers, it’s years of expertise, established supplier relationships, none of which shows up in the final photographs, but all of which determines what they look like.
And, this isn’t unique to floristry.
It’s the reality for photographers, stylists, designers, anyone whose work looks effortless precisely because they’re good at it. The better the craft, the more invisible the labour. And the more invisible the labour, the easier it is to suggest it should come free.
Proper pricing is not about the florist getting what she wants. It’s about the couple getting what they deserve.
When creative work is paid properly, it becomes a genuine collaboration.
The sourcing improves.
The decision-making improves.
The experience improves.
The result is work that is more considered, more personal, and more truly made for the people at the centre of it.
That’s what I want every wedding I work on to be. Which is why I now set clear expectations about value flowing both ways, and why, when I say yes to something, the alignment is genuinely there.
Creatively, professionally, and financially.
The weddings that come out of that? They’re always the best ones.
