Your wedding is one of the most important days of your life and you will need to start your planning early if you are going to ensure that everything is in place for the big day. But the prospect of planning your wedding can be daunting to say the least. There are one hundred and one things to attend to and it is often hard to know where to start.

One major aspect of any wedding is the provision of flowers including the bride's bouquet, the bridesmaids' flowers, buttonholes, corsages, flowers for the ceremony and flowers for the reception. It's no wonder therefore that many couples hand responsibility for the flowers to somebody else and opt for one of the numerous wedding flower packages available today.

Weddings are big business and represent a substantial stream of income for many people including caterers, photographers and florists so you'll find that most florists will be more than used to providing wedding flower packages. But while this might make life easier for you, are you going to get the wedding flowers that you want without having to pay an arm and a leg for them?

Although wedding flowers are often seen as simply decoration they are in reality much more than that and the flowers that you choose for your wedding are an expression of your own personalities and will also send messages between the bride and groom in the presence of their family and friends. Did you know, for example, that lilies are symbolic of purity and innocence, that blue violets are a sign of faithfulness or that ivy is said to bring strength to a marriage.

The secret therefore in selecting a wedding flower package is to let the florist take on the worry and work associated with providing your flowers for the day but, at the same time, to ensure that you have a major say in just what those flowers are going to be and how they are going to be used. And herein often lies the problem.

Many florists will offer wedding flower packages but only on the basis that the selection of flowers provided will depend very much on what is in season and available at the time of the wedding. The choice of flowers will therefore be left very much up to the florist. Packages will also often contain a number of set elements (such as table centerpieces and napkin treatments for the reception) and your choice within these will often be limited.

Before you even approach a florist to provide you with details of the wedding flower packages they can provide, sit down and think carefully about just what you want in the way of flowers and, in particular, consider just what you would class as essential and what you would be prepared to compromise on. At this stage you should also set yourself a budget as, once you sit down with the florist, it will be very easy to get carried away.

Once you are ready speak to a number of florists (I would suggest at least three) and see what they have to offer.

Wedding flower packages can certainly save you a great deal of worry and work and can also often (but not always) save you some money so they are certainly worth investigating. Remember though that you will hopefully only be getting married once in your lifetime and that you can't turn the clock back and re-run your wedding if it doesn't come up to your expectations.

However you decide to handle the provision of flowers for your wedding the most important thing to remember is that you will not be happy unless you get the flowers that you want and, while a little compromise is inevitable, the degree of compromise required by many wedding flower packages will certainly leave you regretting your choice.