Okay, so I loved EVERYTHING about our wedding. Well, just about everything except for our darn Florist. He was ‘the suck.’
Poor Happy Bridesmaid had to carry such an offending bouquet. I don’t understand how a florist can get MY bouquet mostly right but completely mess up the bridesmaid bouquets. Yes, those are rogue daisy leaves left by our florist. You can see more pictures of these bouquets in my beautiful bridesmaids post.
photo by Starks Photography
Every time I think back to our wedding, I think about all the beautiful people and details… then I get to those dang bridesmaid bouquets and I just about want to cry. Here was our plan: Mr. Knight and I would order/put together all the flowers for the reception (with the help from my AMAZING bridesmaids and day-of-coordinator) and the only thing we were going to order was the bouquets, bouts and corsages from a florist. Saving us some much needed $$$ since Mr. Knight and I were footing the bill for many of these wedding ‘accessory’ items.
A few months before the wedding we dropped by a florist in Ormond Beach near our wedding location. We only had time to visit one location since we lived out of town (2 hours away from our wedding location). We met with the owner, checked out all the beautiful pictures of flowers he had done and then showed him our inspiration (below).
Sweet, romantic and whimsical. Those were our 3 words. What did we get? I cringe every time I think about our bouquets. Cringe with embarrassment and cringe at their heinous weed/store bought/5-year-old craft/ugly-ness.
collage made from: Mtux, David’s Bridal, OnceWed, Project Wedding
He said that he loved my daisy look and thought I should make a big statement by having just daisies. I agreed with him and then we moved forward to bridesmaid bouquets and my bouquet. I was overall happy with our consultation and couldn’t wait to see how all the bouquets looked the night before the wedding.
Fast forward to May 14, the Friday before our wedding. I showed up at our Florist, with my bridesmaids in tow, to check out our bouquets.What did I see? Utter heinousness. From the GOLD ribbon he wrapped MY bouquet with, to the lack-luster bridesmaid bouquets that looked like a package of Winn-Dixie $3 daises were just wrapped in ribbon. Just awful. I was immediately let down. I didn’t really know what to do. I critiqued him, told him what to fix and to add tons more white daisies to my bouquet and my bridesmaid’s bouquets. But those bridesmaid bouquets were just awful and I didn’t know what to do.. and what is even worse is that the florist didn’t even recognize how bad they looked. I mean.. I was basically paying $45 a bouquet for him to drive to Winn-Dixie, purchase a $3 bunch of white daisies and wrap a ribbon around them.
Don’t they look like they just picked those daisies out of a random pasture, or rather WEEDS and bunched them up to make a bouquet? Ahh.. this is such a sore point for me.
Picture taken by one of our wedding guests
I was so busy the day before the wedding, so frazzled, so OVER IT, that I just let the bouquets go. I was just like ‘whatever I can’t handle this right now’ and we left the florist. I’m NEVER like this. I’m that person that has to critique something to the Nth degree. I believe I had just reached a breaking point and I decided… F it… I don’t care (please excuse my profanity!). My bridesmaid’s were pretty silent as they looked at the bouquets in horror. Looking back, I wish they had spoken up to help me (sometimes I try to be ‘nice’ and not tell vendors how I REALLY feel). But if I were my bridesmaid’s I probably wouldn’t have said anything either.
Did I mention the florist forgot to leave me a ‘toss’ bouquet, as outlined in our contract? Details. Details. I ended up throwing my ACTUAL bouquet for the toss. One of my bridesmaid’s offered to give me her bouquet to toss, but I felt bad tossing a bouquet of weeds to our wedding guests.
On a happier note, the reception flowers were AMAZING. I couldn’t have asked for them to be any better! I remember walking into the reception, right before our ceremony, and seeing all the flowers, I just wanted to cry they were so beautiful. Exactly what I wanted in EVERY WAY.
Hello GORGEOUS, cheerful, bright and happy. I loved these arrangements our day-of coordinator put together with the flowers we bought. I nearly cried at how perfect they were.
photo by Starks Photography
Our Guestbook table with the cutest IKEA bud vases ever. Loving the fuchsia and white daisy combo.
photo by Starks Photography
Baby arrangement on the bistro tables during the cocktail hour. These are soo cute.
photo by Starks Photography; you can see what our table centerpieces looked like at the beginning of our wedding video.
We ordered white daisies from Fifty Flowers ,fuchsia gerbera daisies from Sam’s Club, and placed cut up lemons in all the vases. They showed up the Thursday before the wedding, and two of my amazing bridesmaids, Sunny MOH and Seminole Bridesmaid, helped me to cut/hydrate and transport them to our reception site.
3 of the 5 buckets of flowers we had. Sooo gorgeous. And those fuchsia gerbera daisies were beautiful!
photo taken on Mrs Gator’s iPhone
Loading the flowers into Mr. Knight’s truck. The truck was a recent purchase on our part and we are so thankful that we took the plunge and got a new vehicle a few weeks before the wedding. We wouldn’t have been able to transport all our wedding goodies/our honeymoon goodies/gifts/and Gator Kitty without this truck (and my little car).
photo taken on Mrs Gator’s iPhone by Gator Momma
Looking back on our wedding I know, without a doubt, that I could have made our bouquets everything I ever wanted, if I had done them myself. My stomach churns just thinking about how much we paid for those terribly sad looking bouquets. I look back at all my friend’s weddings that I was a bridesmaid in and remember how beautiful my bridesmaid bouquet was. I expected something amazing and I was let down by our florist. If you are looking for a florist in the Ormond Beach, FL/Daytona Beach area, contact me first so I can tell you who NOT to go to. Let me save you the embarrassment!
Our total on reception flowers (not even going to talk about wedding flowers because I despise our florist):
- 23 bunches of Vero White Daisies; Fifty Flowers; $171.19
- 100 Stems of Fuchsia Gerber Daisies, Sam’s Club; $136.58
- Lemons from Publix; $25
- Rectangular Vases from Michael’s $45 (40% coupon)
- Misc blue vases from Target and white IKEA vases; $10
Total for Reception Flowers: $387.77
16 centerpieces and 2 large arrangements; $21.54/per arrangement
Amazingly the price per arrangement above doesn’t even include the many bud vases all over our reception. So ‘technically’ the per arrangement cost is even lower then I calculated! It certainly pays to do your own flowers!
Which I believe to be pretty darn amazing! We paid more on our ceremony flowers from the florist ‘who should not be named’ then for our BEAUTIFUL reception flowers. :-)
Phew… feels so good to get this all out. I’ve had all this pint up anger towards our florist, but I feel soooo much better now! But still… $45/per bouquet for what he showed up with was a little ridic.
Did you have any wedding day regrets? Did you wish you had gone with a different vendor or spoken up about something you didn’t like? Do you give anyone at your wedding/vendor/family member the ‘he who should not be named’ treatment after what they did at your wedding? Please SPILL!