Just like a beautiful house doesn’t feel like a home until you add furniture and accessories, sometimes a venue needs a little zhuzh. But that doesn’t mean you have to go all out! A few flowers, some simple greenery, and candles will always do the trick. That advice comes straight out of our own Smart Wedding Planner, and no wedding style proves it better than rustic.
If you’re getting married in a barn, a backyard, or on somebody’s family farm, the arrangements that look right are not the tight, structured ones you’d see in a hotel ballroom. Rustic flowers are looser and a little wilder, like your maid of honor gathered them from the field behind the venue that morning (even if they actually came off a FedEx truck). We’ve rounded up our favorite barn wedding venues before, and the flowers below would look at home at every single one of them.
Here’s the part we love most: the flowers that create this look sit on the cheaper end of the wholesale list. Amy McCord Jones, the florist who founded the DIY flower company Flower Moxie (we interviewed her for our Smart Wedding Planner, and she is the best), has built a whole business on arrangements like these. “Let’s look for the things that are going to get photographed the most, because your 15 tables are not going to get all photographed,” she told us.
So these are the 15 rustic wedding flowers we recommend the most, grouped by the job each one does in an arrangement. We’ll cover when they’re in season, which ones cost pocket change, and how to mix them so your centerpieces look like they belong in that barn.
What Rustic Wedding Flowers Cost
Flowers are one of the categories where sticker shock hits hardest. The Knot’s most recent study puts the average flower bill at $2,800, and in our Smart Wedding Planner we break down the typical range: $3,500 to $8,000 for a full-service florist order (bouquets, centerpieces, and ceremony arrangements), versus $800 to $1,800 if you DIY through an online wholesaler. We get into all of it in our guide to how much wedding flowers cost, but the short version is that a rustic palette works in your favor, because so many of these blooms are inexpensive to begin with.
One thing that surprised us when we talked to McCord Jones: seasonality matters less than it used to. “The way that flowers are grown now and shipped all over the world, it doesn’t have the same type of impact that it did in the 80s or 90s,” she says. The dates to watch are the flower holidays. “I would say that your prices are going to elevate around the big flower holidays, which would be Valentine’s and Mother’s Day.” If you want to see what’s blooming when, we keep a month-by-month list in our guide to wedding flowers by season.
The Statement Flowers
These are the flowers your guests will name when they describe your tables later.
1. Sunflowers
Photo by Courtney Cook on Unsplash
If rustic flowers had a spokesperson, it would be the sunflower! They are hearty and vibrant and are a major vibe. I don’t love them in every venue, however. I think they look best in a barn, lodge, or other campy venue.
If you polled every couple who ever booked a barn, sunflowers would win the flower vote by a mile. One bloom fills a mason jar on its own, the stems stand up to an August afternoon without flopping, and their season (July through October) lines up almost perfectly with barn wedding season. They anchor half the arrangements in our favorite fall wedding flowers for a reason.
Ask for pollenless varieties. Standard sunflowers shed yellow dust that will find its way onto white linens and rented tuxes.
2. Zinnias
Photo by Nancy Hughes on Unsplash
These are so pretty and also a great combo of rustic and modern. Plus there are just so many color combos you can work off of with them.
Zinnias look like a kid’s drawing of a flower, in the best way, with layered petals in everything from coral to lime green. They bloom at local flower farms from June until the first frost, and they’re among the cheapest stems you’ll price out. They ship badly, though, which is your excuse to buy from the farm stand twenty minutes from your venue instead of an online wholesaler.
3. Black-Eyed Susans
I personally prefer these to sunflowers (I know, I know, call me crazy). They feel so 70s to me, I would play off a retro vibe with these.
These are the yellow wildflowers growing along every county road in August, and that familiarity is exactly why they work. Three stems in a bud vase and the table suddenly looks like it belongs at a farmhouse. Pair them with Queen Anne’s lace and a few grasses if you want the full meadow effect.
4. Daisies
Photo by Kristine Cinate on Unsplash
Always a classic, and for good reason. Daisies are light and airy and can look casual or more elevated.
Nobody has ever looked at a daisy and wondered what mood it was going for. Shasta daisies are inexpensive, they photograph crisp against wood tables, and they keep a bright palette from tipping into neon.
The Wildflower Look
This group is what separates rustic from every other wedding style. If you’re planning a full wildflower wedding theme, consider this your shopping list.
This barn aisle from HL Wildflower Weddings shows exactly the look we mean:
via @hlwildflowerweddingsx at Sedgewell Barn
These flowers (and the beautiful chairs, if we’re being honest) make this ceremony space completely magical. Have your florist use these arrangements on each reception table afterwards so they pull double duty and also help your budget.
5. Queen Anne’s Lace
Photo by Ginger Jordan on Unsplash
Queen Anne’s lace is so delicate and can truly work in an outdoor, rustic wedding venue or even one that leans a little fancier.
Queen Anne’s lace is the flat, lacy white bloom that makes a bouquet look gathered rather than built. It grows wild on roadsides in most of the country, which is about as rustic as a flower can get. It does wilt quickly once it’s out of water, so if you want it on an arch, ask your florist about water tubes.
6. Yarrow
Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash
Yarrow is a great filler flower, or it can work totally on its own. It’s up to you!
Yarrow grows in flat-topped clusters of tiny blooms, and the colors run dusty rather than bright: mustard, terracotta, blush, sage. It gives an arrangement that slightly faded, antique feel without any styling effort on your part.
Yarrow air-dries beautifully hung upside down, so your centerpieces can have a second life on your bookshelf.
7. Chamomile
Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev on Unsplash
Chamomile is a majorly underrated rustic wedding flower!
Yes, the tea. Each stem carries a dozen tiny daisies, and you’ll catch the scent every time you brush past them. We love them in bud vases and in a flower crown for the flower girl.
8. Lavender
Lavender pulls double duty as decor and air freshener. Fresh or dried, the purple spikes hold their shape all day, and a small bundle tied with twine dresses up a ceremony chair for a few dollars.
You can see the lavender tucked between the roses in this bouquet from Wild Floral Events in Devon:
The creamy lavender combo is so pretty with sage green accents.
The Texture Makers
Florists sneak these in to keep an arrangement from looking flat, and all four dry so well that this doubles as the keepsake group.
9. Craspedia
I love craspedia in wedding venues that can lean retro/modern and also rustic (think lofts and breweries).
Also called billy balls, craspedia are the little yellow spheres you’ve seen in every rustic boutonniere on Pinterest. There are no petals to bruise or wilt, so they survive hugs, heat, and being pinned to a nervous groom.
10. Blue Thistle
Photo by Brian Cockley on Unsplash
If you want rustic drama, blue thistle is the way to go.
If your palette needs blue, this is the one. Blue thistle (your florist may call it eryngium) is spiky, silvery, and sturdy enough to outlast the whole weekend. A few stems give a soft arrangement some edge, and it fits perfectly if your venue leans more mountain lodge than flower field.
11. Strawflower
Photo by Earl Wilcox on Unsplash
How cool are these flowers? They also come in some really beautiful colors like pink, blush, cream and red in addition to bronze and terracotta.
Strawflower petals feel like paper straight off the stem, which is why they look dried even when they’re fresh. They hold their color for months, too. If you want a bouquet you can set on a shelf afterward without paying for preservation, build it around these.
12. Statice
Photo by paws and prints on Unsplash
You can also get statice naturally dried, which I think looks beautiful in a bouquet.
Statice is the purple filler you’ve seen in grocery store bouquets your whole life, and florists respect it because it dries without losing its color. It’s cheap, it fills gaps, and it does its best work tucked between showier blooms.
The Fillers and the Greenery
These fill the space between the showier stems, and they’re the cheapest part of the whole order.
13. Baby’s Breath
Photo by Fiona Murray-deGraaff on Unsplash
The flower everyone loves to hate (just like carnations)! You can actually make these look really chic when you display them on their own. Plus they’re one of the more budget-friendly flowers on this list.
Even McCord Jones brings it up when she explains how flowers earn dated reputations in the first place.
“It’s like if you design them like it’s the 80s and they’re all springing out and you’ve got baby’s breath, then they don’t look awesome. But you pair those guys with ranunculus and some sweet peas, it’s completely luxurious.”
— Amy McCord Jones, Flower Moxie
14. Waxflower
Waxflower carries tiny pink, white, or purple blooms on woody stems that smell citrusy when you snip them. One inexpensive bunch covers a surprising amount of ground, and it lasts close to two weeks in water, so it forgives an early delivery date.
Tamaryn’s Treasures built a whole woodland bouquet around waxflower, herbs, and mixed greenery:
This bouquet is wild and WOW. I’d hate for it not to be used at the reception afterwards. If you go this big on a bouquet, see if your florist can repurpose them on another table.
15. Eucalyptus
Every rustic wedding you’ve ever pinned has eucalyptus in it somewhere. Silver dollar has the big round leaves, seeded comes with clusters of tiny buds, and gunni is the wispy one bouquets are built on. Run any of them straight down a farm table with candles and you have a centerpiece with no flowers required, which is a trick McCord Jones endorses completely.
“Maybe we do greenery on all the centerpieces, and at the head table we do something just over the top and that will anchor the room. Everybody can see it and enjoy it. People aren’t going to be disappointed that they have greenery and candles.”
— Amy McCord Jones, Flower Moxie
These entrance urns shared by Rustic Wedding Chic are mostly eucalyptus with a handful of blooms, and nobody would call them plain:
via @rusticweddingchic / photo: @arielledphotography
Eucalyptus is often considered filler, but I think it’s a star in its own right.
How to Put It All Together
If you’re doing your own, start with our guide to DIYing a wedding bouquet, and please read the most important thing to remember about DIY wedding flowers before you order a single stem.
If you want to see the whole formula working at once, these three are worth a save. A fall ceremony arch from Floressence Flowers in the mountains outside Asheville:
via @floressenceflowers / photo: @katiestoops
When using rustic flowers outside, you’ll want to keep with the background colors. Let nature speak to you!
One oversized arrangement on a wine barrel doing the work of an entire ceremony backdrop at Durham Hill Farm:
via @durhamhillfarm / photo: @anna.claire.photos
This venue screams rustic, but so do the flowers. Rustic flowers are most beautiful when the colors blend into the background, in my opinion.
And a foam-free arbour piece from Euka Floral Design, made with all locally grown blooms:
Pops of pink, red, and orange come together beautifully in this rustic arrangement.
Two save tips straight from our planner: have your florist move the ceremony arrangements into the reception during cocktail hour, and mix in candles wherever the flower budget runs out. We have plenty more ideas like that in our budget centerpieces guide and our roundup of favorite rustic wedding ideas.
And if a guest assumes you picked everything from the field out back that morning? Take the compliment.
Some links in this post may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through them. Thank you for your support!
