Wedding Couples- If wedding flowers are a priority for your big day, then you should consider going with a different florist.
My husband and I did our due diligence and checked out numerous florists. Just behind our venue, the florist was the next top priority. At the outset I sent Chantelle at J'Adore pictures as inspiration for what we wanted (Romantic, Lush, and Full). I even took the time to write out what I liked and didn't like about each pictured floral arrangement. When we met with Chantelle face-to-face, we felt it was a good meeting and that she "got it". However, because of how important the flowers were to us, we paid extra $$ to have a mock-up done. At the mock-up, Chantelle wasn't there and instead it was 2 J'Adore representatives we hadn't met/communicated with before. The initial set up did not meet our expectations at all, but the J'Adore employees were very open to rearranging. We took the time to work with them until we got the centerpieces right. I even had the J'Adore employee recite back to me the necessary/important changes that we wanted to ensure they understood. At this point I took pictures of the mock-up, and the J'Adore girl took pictures too. I told her I didn't want the plastic container holding the arrangement to show and she reassured me it wouldn't be showing because the arrangement was going to be so full. From the changes made at the mock up, our floral quote went up by $3,000 and now totaled over $8,700 ($1,000 extra for our sweetheart table and $2,000 for the center pieces).
On the day of the wedding we requested a first look at the ballroom where our reception was taking place. I remember feeling dumbfounded that our centerpieces looked NOTHING like we had been expecting. The centerpieces had the plastic showing, the arrangements were on the wrong vases, and Most disappointing, the flower arrangements were nowhere near as lush and full as had been determined and agreed upon in our mock-up. In fact, the arrangements were even smaller than the mock-up (see attached photos from the mock-up and actual day). At this point we are on cloud 9 (having just been married) and the reception starts in 20 minutes, so we just had to roll with it. But for the rest of the evening we had to look at floral arrangements that were not what had been agreed to. After paying the extra money for the mock-up so that they knew EXACTLY what they were supposed to do(they literally just had to "copy and paste"), the expectation was that everything would be as it was agreed on in the mock-up. As a result of the mock-up, our floral quote increased, and the floral centerpiece arrangements got smaller?? How could anyone feel anything but absolutely ripped off? In the end, J'Adore did not deliver what we had agreed upon from the mock-up and it took away a special part of the day that we were looking forward to.
While the J'Adore employees were nice people, we would have preferred a company who took us, our wedding day, and our money seriously. We recently learned from our wedding planner who spoke with J'Adore about our dissatisfaction that we basically "slipped through the cracks" and that the changes made during the mock-up were "lost in communication". However, it is difficult to believe that everything was attributed to poor communication, since our quote clearly stated which arrangements go with which vases, there's pictures and we made the J'Adore employee recite back to us the changes. Even when it was documented on their paperwork, they got it wrong. We are left to assume that 1) they were not organized enough to follow their own task list, and 2) our mock up revisions that got "lost in translation" just weren't important enough to J'Adore to see through to the end (they had no problem taking our money though!).
If J'Adore was too busy to give us their full attention, they should have told us they couldn't take us on as a client instead of making promises that they could not deliver. We may have been just another client to them but for us this was our ONE big day, which is probably the most frustrating. There is no second chance. They had one shot to get it right and they didn't deliver what was discussed and agreed upon during the mock-up. I'm sure we will be having parties (family or professional) in the future and we definitely will not be using them again (especially if they can't take $8,700+ serious, how serious will they take a smaller scaled event?) and I will not and could not recommend them to our family or friends.
Finally, if their gross incompetence with our center pieces wasn't insult enough they gifted me a bracelet. Which is nice right? It was a wired bracelet that spelled out something (like someone's name). Except that they gave me a wired bracelet with the WRONG name. I guess it is actually kind of fitting. It truly shows how seriously they took their job and us. If you don't want your flowers to "slip through the cracks," save yourself and go with someone else. read more