We make artificial wedding flowers for a living, so we're obviously not neutral — but we also don't think fresh flowers are a bad choice. They solve different problems, and knowing which ones matter to you is the real question.
Timing
Fresh flowers are ordered close to your date and arrive within days of the wedding, which means there's little room for scheduling mistakes and almost no time to fix a color that's not quite right. Artificial flowers can be ordered months in advance — they don't wilt, so there's no rush, and you can see and approve exactly what you're getting well before the big day.
Weight and Wear Over a Long Day
A fresh bouquet is heaviest and freshest the moment it's cut, and it's downhill from there — by evening, petals can bruise, wilt, or drop. Silk and foam stems are lighter than their fresh equivalents, so you can carry a fuller, more dramatic bouquet for four or five hours of ceremony, portraits, and dancing without it drooping or your arm getting tired.
Cost
Fresh flowers are priced by season and availability, which can make certain colors or blooms expensive or simply unavailable on your date. Artificial arrangements are priced once, regardless of season, and an out-of-season color palette costs the same as an in-season one.
What You're Left With
This is the one that surprises people the most: a fresh bouquet is beautiful for one day and compost within a week. An artificial one goes home with you, or with a bridesmaid, and can sit on a shelf for years. If part of what you want from your bouquet is a physical keepsake, that's a real point in artificial's favor.
Where Fresh Still Wins
Fragrance is the obvious one — artificial flowers don't smell like anything, fresh ones can fill a room. And if you specifically want a particular fresh, in-season bloom as a personal or sentimental choice, no substitute quite replaces that. We also carry real preserved rose petals for aisles and tables, for brides who want a bit of both.
Neither option is the “correct” one. It comes down to what you're optimizing for on the day — and what, if anything, you want to still have a year later.