The three things 'in season' might mean
When a florist says a flower is "in season," they are drawing from one of three very different supply chains, and the bill — and the bloom quality — varies accordingly.
The first meaning is genuinely local and current: the flower is being grown nearby, cut this week, and sold within a short radius. A British sweet pea in July fits this definition cleanly. It has travelled perhaps fifty miles, it was in the ground a few days ago, and its vase life is largely intact. This is what most couples picture when they ask for seasonal flowers, and it is the rarest of the three things the phrase describes.
The second meaning is hemispherical arbitrage. A dahlia in November is not out of season — it is simply being grown in Kenya, Colombia or the Netherlands under glass. The global cut-flower trade is enormous and highly organised: the Dutch auction houses at Aalsmeer process tens of millions of stems a day, drawing from growers across four continents. A flower that is "in season" from a Kenyan grower in December is real and fresh, but it has travelled four thousand miles or more in a refrigerated hold, and the environmental and cost arithmetic is entirely different from a local stem. Neither fact makes it wrong to use; it just means the word "seasonal" is carrying more freight than it appears to be.
The third meaning is cold storage. Certain flowers — notably peonies — are harvested at peak season, held in temperature-controlled stores at just above freezing, and released to market months later. A peony in October is not growing anywhere in the northern hemisphere. It was cut in June, kept in the dark at around two degrees Celsius, and is now being brought out of storage into your bouquet. Cold-stored flowers are generally fine; their vase life is shorter than a fresh-cut stem, and they can be more fragile, but most consumers would never know the difference. What they are not is seasonal in any intuitive sense of the word.
Why it matters for planning
The practical consequence of all this is that "can I have peonies in October?" has three possible answers, depending on which supply chain your florist is working with, and each answer has a different price attached. Locally grown peonies in October: essentially no. Cold-stored northern hemisphere peonies: probably, at a premium, with a caveat about fragility. Southern hemisphere fresh-cut peonies: yes, if your florist sources from the right growers, at a cost that includes air freight.
None of this is nefarious. But it does mean that when a florist quotes you a price "because it's in season," the savings may be modest if "in season" means flown in from Colombia rather than cold-stored from France. The phrase is not a guarantee of price, freshness or low carbon footprint — it is a description of availability, and availability is now essentially global.
Where local-and-current seasonality genuinely pays off is in foliage and garden-variety cutting flowers: broom, herbs, and anything a good wholesale market is selling in quantity because it is locally abundant. These are the stems where seasonal pricing is real, where the cold chain is short and the vase life is long. A florist who builds an arrangement around what the British countryside or a Dutch glasshouse is producing this specific week — rather than airfreighting a signature bloom — will almost always produce something cheaper, fresher and more resilient than one chasing a single hero flower out of its natural window.
What to ask instead
The more useful question than "is it in season?" is: where is it coming from, and how long has it been cut? A florist who can answer that knows their supply chain. One who answers only in the language of seasonal mood boards may not.
Ask whether the specific variety is locally grown, imported fresh, or cold-stored. Ask what the vase life is likely to be. Ask whether there is a close substitute that is genuinely local to the week of your wedding. Those three questions will tell you more than any seasonal rhetoric, and they will also tell you a great deal about the florist.