Starting a wedding flower business, in sequence

The first paid job

The first wedding somebody pays you for is almost never the result of a plan. It is a friend, or a friend of a friend, and it is usually priced with a number that came out of the air. That is a normal way to start and a bad way to continue, because the number you pick then tends to anchor everything you quote for the next two years.

The single most useful thing to do on that first job is to keep the paperwork you would have kept if it had been a real job: the recipe, the invoices, the hours, and what you charged. Even if the price was wrong, the record turns it into data you can price the second job from.

Wholesale access, and what it asks of you

Buying at wholesale rather than retail is the step that changes the arithmetic, because it moves the entire cost side of every recipe. It is also the step where the business first has to exist as an entity rather than as you personally.

Wholesalers set their own requirements for opening a trade account, and what they ask for differs between suppliers and between states. What is worth knowing in advance is the shape of it: they generally want evidence that you are a business buying to resell rather than a consumer looking for a discount. Exactly which registrations, numbers, or documents satisfy that is a question for the supplier and for whatever your state requires, and it is not something this site can answer for you.

Space, cold, and transport

Three physical constraints decide how big a job you can take, and they bind in this order.

1. Bench space. Where the work happens, how many pieces can be in progress at once, and whether more than one person can work at the same time.
2. Cold storage. How much finished and unfinished product you can hold in condition, which decides how far ahead you can build and therefore how large a job you can schedule.
3. Transport. How much finished work you can move in one trip, upright and cool, and how many trips the timeline has room for.

Cold storage is the one people underestimate, because its effect is indirect: it does not stop you taking a big job, it stops you building it early enough to survive the timeline. A studio with generous bench space and no cooler is limited to what it can build in the last day.

Price properly from the first job you quote

The most expensive habit to acquire early is pricing to win the job rather than pricing the job. It is expensive for two reasons that compound: the work you take at a low price occupies the dates you would otherwise sell properly, and the clients who booked you at that price refer clients who expect it.

Pricing properly does not mean pricing high. It means the number is produced by the recipe, the hours, and your costs, and you can say how you got to it. A price you can explain survives negotiation. A price you picked does not.

What to formalize, and roughly when

There is a real question about when a side business becomes a business, and the honest answer is that it is partly a legal question with a jurisdiction dependent answer and partly a practical one.

The practical triggers are easier to state: you are turning work away for lack of capacity, you are buying ahead of income, somebody else is working for you, or you are signing agreements that commit you months in advance. Each of those changes your exposure, and each is a reasonable moment to get advice from somebody licensed where you work.