Venue wants $200 to dead head rose bushes

knottie723ba657f3426cb5

Help!  I had a site visit with our venue last week.  The ceremony will be outside and the reception inside at a golf club.  The rose bushes lining the sidewalk look terrible and are in serious need of some cleaning up (my mom works in landscape design, and I can only imagine what she'll say when she sees them).  I asked our POC to have the grounds crew make sure to clean up/dead head the roses before our ceremony on May 12.  He now tells me that isn't part of the normal grounds maintenance and it will cost me $200 to have this done.  Does that seem normal to you???  Should I ask if we can bring our own clippers and do it ourselves the day of the rehearsal?  (I'm not kidding.)  Your help is appreciated!

charlotte989875

knottie723ba657f3426cb5 said:

Help!  I had a site visit with our venue last week.  The ceremony will be outside and the reception inside at a golf club.  The rose bushes lining the sidewalk look terrible and are in serious need of some cleaning up (my mom works in landscape design, and I can only imagine what she'll say when she sees them).  I asked our POC to have the grounds crew make sure to clean up/dead head the roses before our ceremony on May 12.  He now tells me that isn't part of the normal grounds maintenance and it will cost me $200 to have this done.  Does that seem normal to you???  Should I ask if we can bring our own clippers and do it ourselves the day of the rehearsal?  (I'm not kidding.)  Your help is appreciated!

I think it's a little weird this isn't part of normal maintenance, however at a golf club that isn't primarily a wedding venue I'm not entirely surprised. Their grounds crew is likely tasked with maintaining the golf course and surrounding area. Depending on where you're located it's possible mid-May is the early start of the season (it would be where I am in the in NE), so maybe flowers aren't a priority until later in the season.

If you feel strongly about it then sure ask to do it yourselves, but be prepared for the to come back with a hard no. It's unlikely any venue (or business in general) would let you do work on the grounds. 

How big of a deal is this to you? If it's a huge thing you absolutely want done you might just have to suck it up and pay. Otherwise, tell your photographer that you're not going to do many shots in front of the rosebushes. 

flantastic

Yeah, there's a lot of groundskeeping that goes into golf courses, and they're probably focused on the moneymaking ones, i.e. the course itself. You're probably the first person who has ever cared enough to say anything about the bushes.

I second Charlotte - you should ask if you can do it yourself, and if the answer is no, then decide if you care $200 worth.

climbingsingle

I can't imagine they'll let you do this yourself. Liability and whatnot. But no, I would not pay $200 for this. Really, no one will notice. 

ahoywedding

Our ceremony was outside in a garden area that would have had a bunch of things blooming, but we had an unusual warm spell early in the year and then a cold snap right before our wedding so things bloomed all weird. I was a little worried about how it would look with some plants dead-ish, some bloomed and gone already, and some things flowering, but you know what? You can't really tell in our pictures.

If it's worth $200 to you to have the rose bushes fixed, go for it. But if you need that money elsewhere in the budget, it probably wouldn't be the end of the world for your guests. 

thisismynickname2

Let me ask... do YOU care, or are you worried your mom will care? Are these sidewalks part of your ceremony procession where there will be photos, or is it like, a short entrance to the building?  Plus, things could look a lot different in a month, no?

I mean, it's $200, but plenty of people can find plenty other things to put $200 towards and it's highly probably no one else but you and your mom will notice. 

This sounds like a total non-issue to me, really. But my best friend's MIL freaked out about one detail of their reception hall claiming "all the photos will be ruined" and no one cared; plus the number of photos with that detail in it were slim compared to the church photos, the outdoor portraits, etc. Mother-daughter relationships can get a bit wacko during wedding planning and I urge you to put this in perspective.