Fiorello Studio was the florist for my wedding. My venue required that I work with them. My primary contact was Laurie Nigliazzo. She was difficult to work with and routinely late, both before and during the wedding. I would absolutely not use this vendor again and I would definitely not recommend them to others.
I included more details below, but in summary: (1) Laurie was incredibly difficult to communicate with, (2) we did not receive the volume of florals we agreed upon for our chuppah, and (3) Laurie arrived late on our wedding day, so we did not have our bouquet or boutonniere for portraits and we weren't able to take take family portraits at our beautiful ceremony space as planned.
From the beginning, communication was a major challenge. Because of COVID, I planned a very small wedding with about 4 months of lead time. My venue assured me that the florist (who they required using) was available for the wedding. I reached out to the florist about 3.5 months before the wedding and had trouble getting her on the phone. After several attempts, Laurie texted me back and said that she received my messages and would call me within the hour. Two and half hours later she texted to say that she was very busy and "was unable to get to [me]". She did not offer to connect another time. I had to ask her to schedule a call and she was only able to talk to me a week later. This is a terrible way to engage a new client. She was also routinely late or unprepared for our future calls.
When we did connect, it was nearly impossible to get Laurie to articulate what we would be getting for our money. For example, she told us that due to the rising cost of flowers, we would need to give her an extra $1,000 for the table florals, which were already included in our wedding package. We asked her what the extra money would buy us and the only thing she said was we wouldn't have enough flowers otherwise. We pushed back and did not give her the extra money for the centerpieces. In the end, the amount of florals on the table was fine.
Laurie completely shortchanged us with respect to our chuppah (wedding arch). Laurie originally quoted us $1,500 just for decorating the chuppah, but later said we would need to pay $2,000 because of the rising cost of flowers. Laurie assured us numerous times that our budget would allow for a large cluster of flowers on the left side and some flowers on the right side, so we agreed to the $2,000. In actuality, there were less than 20 flower stems on the entire chuppah, which is way fewer than we discussed and nowhere near justifies the cost.
Laurie and her team arrived late on our wedding day, which caused several problems for our photos. We checked with Laurie multiple times before the wedding to ensure that she would load in the chuppah between 7am and 9am as required by the venue. She assured us she would. The venue also confirmed that Laurie would deliver our bouquet and boutonniere by 11am. However, Laurie did not arrive at the venue until 1:30pm and was rushing to put the florals on the chuppah before our 3pm guest arrival. Because of Laurie's lateness, we weren't able to take our family portraits in front of the chuppah overlooking the beautiful Napa Valley prior to the ceremony as planned. We were forced to take our pictures in another place with no beautiful view. Additionally, because Laurie arrived so late, we did not have our bouquet or boutonniere for our portraits (our photographer even remarked she had never done portraits without florals). When we confronted Laurie about our disappointment with the timing, she admitted to rushing and blamed us even though we had reviewed the schedule multiple times with her. (She said, "It was incredibly difficult for our team to setup and we were very rushed as we were surprised to be surrounded by all of your wedding guests at 1:30.") There were only 10 family members there who had always been scheduled to be there for pictures and they stayed out of her way.
I wish we hadn't paid Laurie in full prior to the wedding because there's nothing we can do about the poor service after the fact. read more