A few weeks ago we fired our florist.
(Technicially, we never hired them, but the sentiment is the same).
Rachel & I were committed to keeping the wedding within budget. We
had allocated $800 for flowers — around here that is a very low price,
but honestly, there are many more worthwhile things
you can do with $800 than blow them on 8 hours’ worth of flowers. We
had been discussing our plans with one of the store’s proprietors for
about 2 months. While this guy (let’s call him “Bruce” – he does)
seemed to really listen to our ideas and had a very creative approach
to the flowers, he also was terribly disorganized and flaky. We figured
this would be an OK tradeoff, though we also were considering how to
set up the contract to ensure on-time performance on the actual wedding
day.

Well, when it came time to finalize our plans, Bruce came back to us
with a $1,200 proposal — way beyond our budget and means. Rachel ended
up in a 11pm discussion with him in which she tried to cut the number
of flowers and arrangements to hit our budget. Bruce pulled every trick
he could to keep the price up. Finally, Rachel flat-out told him, “If
you need to hit $1,000 to make a profit, just tell us.” If he had said
“yes,” we probably would have paid. But he refused to answer, and
instead threatened us with the possibility of late delivery.

We don’t take kindly to threats, and that was that. What could have
been a small but profitable business deal for him and a very creative
floral arrangement for us went out the window. Luckily, flowers just
weren’t a priority for us, so we decided to go with a local, albeit
more expensive, flower shop to produce just personal flowers (bouquet,
boutonnieres).

Maybe others have had a good experience with these guys. I don’t know; Bruce never gave us wedding references. My best advice: stay away.

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