When all was said and done, I was very pleased with my wedding flowers from Sugar Magnolias…read more However, I say this with mixed feelings. I will explain:
I contacted SM about 6 months before my wedding. We did very minimal flowers at our wedding. Bouquets for me and my MOH, a petal basket and head wreath for the flower girl, garlands to drape over the bar area and garlands for the bride and groom chairs. Erin at SM was a pleasure to work with via email. I changed my mind at least half a dozen times, and she was always prompt, friendly and accommodating. We didnt have wedding colors per se, but the day morphed into lots of green, white and gold with pops of red. The gold I wanted in the floral arrangements was just that--a golden hue. I specifically said no sunshine yellow or mustard yellow which was on my invoice.
On the wedding day, my in-laws went to Rochelle to pick up the arrangements which was about 30 minutes from our wedding site. When they came back, I almost cried. it was about 3 hours from the wedding, and all over my bouquet was sunshine yellow. It was a beautiful bouquet, but it didn't match the color scheme of the day at all and simply put, it was exactly what I asked NOT to be included in the bouquet (not to mention, the limited florals we had were not cheap!).
My family was amazing and wisked everything away and told me not to worry, that they would sort it out. After they toyed with the idea of my brother-in-law (a former floral shop worker) fixing it, my mother called the florst and told them what happened. They initially wanted to meet her halfway between the shop and the wedding venue to fix the bouquet, but she put her foot down and said no, they had to come to us (there was zero time for someone to make that trip). They did come to us, but apparently it was very begrugingly so. Luckily I didn't see this, but our wedding coordinator told me that the designer who showed up was very rude and brusk. Later on, I learned that my mother-in-law experienced a similar attitude when she picked everything up at the shop.
When I saw my bouquet later on, I loved it. They replaced the yellow with white hued flowers and it looked gorgeous. One of my sisters-in-law swapped out the yellow ribbon on the flower girl basket with gold ribbon we already had on hand, and everything came together in time. What I envisioned became reality, and I was very happy.
However, after learning about the designer's attitude towards my family members and our wedding coordinator, I was left with a sour taste in my mouth. My husband is a wedding photographer, and I know how essential it is to have a good reputation in the wedding industry. SM had nothing but raves, so I was really surprised that we had such a trying experience. I emailed the owner and Erin thanking them for their flexibility, but also communicating how taken aback people were by the designer's behavior. The owner wrote back herself with a bunch of excuses instead of an apology, saying that the designer who made the trip was shocked to hear about our coordinator's experience, that they just had one car to make the trip, that they had another wedding that day and blah blah. I believe there was a 'I'm sorry you had a bad experience' in there, but nothing in the way of an explicit apology.
And this is the best part--I relayed to our coordinator what the owner said, only to find out that the 'designer' who showed up to make the fixes was in fact the owner herself!! I'm not sure why she couldn't just fess up that it was her and apologize...she had to have known I would find out.
So in the end, I have mixed feelings. I was so so pleased with the final product...while we had limited florals at our wedding, they really added to the asthetic and made everything that much more beautiful. However, I won't be able to look at our wedding photos without feeling a small twinge of sadness given everything else that happened.
