Many of the couples we work with already have a florist in mind before they contact us — a friend who trained at a design school in London, a family-run shop back home that did their parents’ wedding, or simply someone whose work they have followed for years. Bringing that florist to Lapland is entirely possible, and often produces a beautiful result. It does, however, change how the styling process works, and it is worth understanding that shape before you commit to it.
At Rovaniemi Weddings, we style full weddings in-house, including floral design, but we also collaborate regularly with visiting florists. The two arrangements are different jobs, not competing ones, and knowing which one you are asking for makes the whole process smoother.
What Changes When Florals Travel With You
A florist accustomed to a home market is usually not accustomed to Lapland’s supply chain. Certain stems available year-round in the UK or continental Europe simply are not grown or imported here in the same volume, and anything shipped fresh faces customs handling, cold-chain requirements, and a narrow delivery window before a wedding day. We ask visiting florists early which flowers are non-negotiable to their design, so we can source locally where a substitution works and flag honestly where it will not.
Climate is the other variable. A design built for a marquee in an English summer needs adjusting for a Lapland reception, whether that means structural support for stems in near-freezing temperatures during a winter wedding, or protection from the low humidity and constant daylight of the Arctic summer. This is usually the single most valuable thing local collaboration adds — not aesthetic judgment, but practical knowledge of how flowers actually behave here.
How the Collaboration Works
Our usual process starts with a joint call three to four months before the wedding, bringing your florist, our styling lead, and — where relevant — the venue’s own team into one conversation. We share our palette references, table dimensions, and the structural elements already planned (arches, backdrops, table settings), and your florist shares their design concept and stem list.
From there, we handle what is local: sourcing substitutions, arranging delivery logistics, coordinating with the venue on installation timing, and providing the vessels, mechanics, and structural framework the florals will sit within. Your florist typically handles the creative direction and, where they choose to travel, the final assembly on site. Some florists prefer to send detailed designs and let our team execute them locally; others prefer to fly in for the final two days. Both work well, provided it is decided early.
Where Costs Sit Differently
Couples are sometimes surprised that flying in a florist does not necessarily cost less than using our in-house design team, once travel, accommodation, and freight are added. It can still be the right choice — for a couple whose florist is part of their story, cost is rarely the deciding factor — but it is worth budgeting honestly rather than assuming familiarity is free. As a general guide, our full styling packages begin from €4,000, and a visiting-florist collaboration typically sits within a similar range once logistics are included, depending on scale.
We are direct about this during the planning call, because the couples who are happiest with the arrangement are the ones who chose it for the right reason.
What We Ask of a Visiting Florist
A short design brief in advance — even a simple moodboard and stem list — lets us prepare accurate local sourcing well before arrival. We also ask for a realistic sense of how many installation hours the design needs, since Lapland venues often have tighter turnaround windows between ceremony and reception than couples expect, particularly at remote lodges with a single events team.
In return, we provide a local point of contact who knows the venue, the weather, and the delivery routes, so your florist is never solving a Lapland problem alone from abroad.
A Note on Timing
Whichever route you choose, decide by roughly the six-month mark. Visiting florists need time to plan travel around a design brief and secure any specialty stems from their own suppliers, and our local sourcing works best with a season of lead time rather than a rushed few weeks. Couples who leave this decision until the final months often end up with fewer options on both sides — a compressed brief for their florist, and a narrower local substitution list for us.
When In-House Design Makes More Sense
For couples without a florist they are attached to, our own design team is usually the simpler path — we already know which stems hold their shape at minus fifteen degrees, which venues have cold storage on site, and how to build a look that matches the rest of the day’s styling without a second team to coordinate. Many couples land here not because visiting florists are impractical, but because the in-house route removes one more moving part from a destination wedding that already has plenty.
Bringing Your Vision, Wherever It Started
Whether your florals come from a shop you have trusted for years or from a design built entirely on the ground here, the goal is the same: an arrangement that feels native to the landscape it stands in, not imported despite it. Good collaboration is mostly a matter of asking the right questions early, before flights are booked and stems are ordered.
Explore our approach to floral design in the floral décor collection, or see how it fits within a full wedding styling service. If you already have a florist in mind and want to talk through how a Lapland collaboration would work for your wedding, reach out through our contact page — we reply within one business day.
