We found Floral Elegance on a wedding website in December 2010 and after much research, we decided to go with them for our wedding because of their beautiful arrangements and good reviews. Our wedding was not for a while, but we felt it was necessary to book our date: 9-10-11.
I emailed Adriana about our interest and she responded quickly. She asked us what we were looking for and for our budget. She then proceeded to email me with what she proposed we could do for our budget and she set up an appointment for me and my fiance to go into their store.
Upon arrival at the shop, we were met by a male assistant that informed us that Adriana would not be available because she was meeting with another bride (she said she would personally be meeting with us). Adriana's husband seemed to feel bad that we were not able to meet with Adriana, so he tryed to intercept our questions, but only made things harder for us. The assistant had no clue what we were working on with Adriana and pushed his own ideas on us. Everytime we would try to give him an idea of what we wanted, he persuaded us against it.
Due to HIS flower choices for us, it caused our proposal price to go up $1000 (we did not discover this price difference until 2 weeks later when they emailed us)!!! They were unable to provide us with vases to our liking (which they insisted on purchasing for us-to add to our price), so we told them not to include it in our pricing.
After several emails back and forth (over a 4 month time period) we became very frustrated and decided to wait a little while to decide on the flowers (since we had put $ down to secure our date and had time).
It would take at least a week for a response, up to 3 weeks on one occasion.
After still not having a signed proposal or agreed upon flowers, Adriana emailed me and requested us to pay a 50% deposit. WE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT FLOWERS/VASES OR ARRANGEMENTS WE NEEDED, but they were still asking for money.
Now after some hardships, we are unable to shell out $3300 in flowers, and have decided to use that money some where else that might be more useful. We emailed Adriana to see if we could use the $150 deposit we put down towards a bouquet for myself (so I can still have a beautiful bouquet) and she responded:
"I am sorry we cannot use the deposit on a cancelled wedding contract for 1 floral bouquet. You are basically cancelling the contract and want to use the $150.00 on one item. The $150.00 is part of the time spent on putting everything together and research for ideas done especially for your wedding . I hope you understand."
Really?!?!? We never even saw this lady and her ASSISTANT met with us once for 1 hour, sent maybe 4 emails and they can't give us flowers for the money we spent? I think that is very rude considering the service we received.
Floral Elegance is obviously a retailer that has to overprice their flowers for the retail space they pay for and refuse to honor money when it is put down for services. I was excited to have them cater our wedding, but I feel that because we weren't willing to pay more than $3,000 for flowers they are not going to accomodate us as well as the up-scale weddings in Stone Oak that they cater to. read more