Ladies,
I hope all is going well for those of you still planning your wedding! We have been married a week and it has been wonderful - the wedding went great but as everyone will tell you something will go wrong, let it go and deal with it after. That being said, I wanted to provide you with one of many vendor reviews to come - I will post them as we complete them. Below is our review and a written letter that we will be sending to Ele` 3 Events - should they response I will update appropriately.
*It won't show the photos so if you would like to see please PM me and I will send them to you*
Ele` 3 Events, There will be a few things that stick out in my memory from our wedding day. There will be the amazing parts of the day; the homily the priest gave and how sweet it was, how amazing my husband and dad looked, the food which was wonderful and what a wonderful time people had. Then, there will be the things that were a disappointment on our wedding day – for us it was the flowers. For me, there were few things more important than having amazing flowers on our wedding day – the food, and people having fun were those things that ranked above the flowers. I can honestly say that I felt I took all of the necessary steps to prevent the flowers from being a disappointment; unfortunately it seems that I may not have done enough. We began our search for a florist with reaching out to fifteen florists via email and telephone after researching their websites and online reviews. After speaking with the fifteen florists we evaluated their response time, ability to communicate via email, answer our questions and how accommodating they seemed. We then narrowed the list down to five florists and met in person with them – from there we chose your company. As you can see we went through a very thorough process to hire what we felt was the best company in both the metro Detroit and Lansing area to provide the arrangements for our wedding day. We truly appreciated how quickly you responded to communication and how accommodating you seemed when we met. Jennifer made us feel at ease and that our arrangements would be exactly what we envisioned on our wedding day. Throughout the process the timely responses continued and that was appreciated. When we booked Ele` 3 Events, please know that your company provided a quote that was $300 over our second choice vendor. We chose to move forward with your company because we appreciated that you were candid in explaining that you were building your portfolio and assured us that you had the manpower and talent to provide us with the flowers we were asking for. At the time we felt confident that the extra cost would pay off in the end with the quality of flowers we would be receiving. As we moved forward with the process, it became a concern to both Tim and myself that Ele` 3 Events might not be able to meet our expectations in providing the quality and design we were asking of them. When we met in March to view our mock-up, I was surprised that there were brown petals left on the floral arrangement. It was a concern that was never addressed as to why the brown petals were left but instead danced around. I was informed that was how the flowers came in, as ‘the flowers for your wedding will be much fresher and we will have more variety to choose from’ and ‘not to worry, they will be perfect for your wedding.’ Now, I am not nor was I asking for perfection, but just brown petals not visible on our wedding day. I settled for the response and excuse of the seasonality of the flowers and was reassured that Ele` 3 Events would take the necessary steps to remove the dead petals on the day of our event. We met one more time in May to revisit the mock-up and address concerns that I had over the variation of what we were asking from them and what we received in the mock-up. I had concerns over the proportion of the vase size to the arrangement size; the vase was significantly larger and disproportionate to the floral arrangement. To solve the issue around the size of the arrangement, we decided to switch the vase as the ladies at Ele` 3 Events had a concern over the original vase being too top heavy to support a larger arrangement. We also discussed adding accents of stock and hydrangea to add the additional size that we were seeking. The stock and hydrangea were to be used as accents only – this was reemphasized in an email to Jennifer Warner on May 12th which she confirmed in a response on May 15th. Jennifer responded “Centerpieces will have A LOT of roses and the stock and hydrangea will be accents…We will make it look pleasing the eye and balanced,” to my clarifying statement “I want to double (okay, triple check) that they *centerpieces* will still be a majority roses with hydrangea & stock as accents.” When I arrived to the reception venue on our wedding day, I was dumbfounded that the arrangements were the opposite of the above description. They were majority hydrangea visible with accents of roses – and the vase was larger than the mock-up vase which made the floral arrangement appear extremely disproportioned. To add to the frustration, the flowers were wilted, had brown petals and appeared to have gone without water for a significant amount of time. Jennifer asked me what I thought, and candidly I told her I was not happy and it was not what we ordered. The response I received was an apology and that they ‘never received anything less than five stars.’ I am very aware of the ratings, it is part of why I selected you as our floral vendor, however at this point I am not concerned over past performance and instead only that you failed to meet your contractual obligation to provide fresh flowers and the arrangements we agreed upon. Sherry made a point to inform us that they did not profit on our wedding, in fact she made a point to tell us they had to re-order $2000 worth of flowers. It is obvious that the supplier Ele` 3 Event chooses to use has a history of providing you with flowers of subpar quality. Your choice to continue to utilize a supplier that cannot provide fresh flowers does not pose concern on my end as their client, had you purchased flowers from a different supplier you would not have had to reorder the flowers, and I thought it was inappropriate for you to explain how you ‘already didn’t make any money on your wedding.’ I was appalled when I arrived to the church to find corsages and button holes. The corsages were already beginning to fall off the metal backing, as they were hot-glued on. I have received several corsages during my lifetime and never have they been hot-glued or fallen off within an hour of receiving them. It is disheartening to know that my bridal shower corsage from the local grocery store florist lasted longer than these, extremely disheartening. In addition to the lack of quality and craftsmanship, the corsages were nothing more than button holes with an elastic band on them. The button holes for the gentleman were supposed to be tied together with a lemon leaf, there was no leaf. This is the groom’s button hole; the photo was taken the evening of our wedding day. As you can see it was not wrapped with floral tape, but instead what appeared to be electrical tape. Also, the flower is beyond brown and tearing. The flower girls pomanders were brown before they girls received them. In fact, the girls were not able to touch them until just before the ceremony because we were concerned that the flowers would fall out – which they began doing during photos after the ceremony. In addition to flowers falling out, the ribbon was not secured and the green floral wire that was holding it into the Styrofoam began to slide out of the pomander forcing the girls to hold onto the bottom of the balls versus by the ribbon. Bridesmaid bouquets, the word “lush” appears in our Ele` 3 Events contract many times and it seems, after receiving our flowers, that the word “lush” has a very different meaning for the Ele` 3 ladies. The bridesmaid bouquets were 10 roses, secured with duct tape covered with black ribbon. The roses were brown, petals were falling off and the pins used to secure the ribbon had the pearls falling off the pinhead. As I said, I have never seen hot glue or duct tape used with fresh flowers but apparently it is a standard for you. With all of the corners that were cut in producing our flowers, it is surprising that you did not profit on our wedding. As you can see in the photo on the right below, duct tape is the only thing holding the bouquet together. The photo on the left shows just one example of hot glue being used. The altar arrangement appeared to be an afterthought. The greenery was placed randomly into the middle of the arrangements, and again disproportionate. “Lush” was also a generous term to be provided to this arrangement, as it was not lush as there were twelve roses in the arrangement. They were not placed in the bar area as written on the contract, but instead by the gift table and while this seems like a minor detail it is another example of the inability to follow direction. There were to be twenty pew arrangements that were to be placed on extra tables and bathrooms. While I cannot state 100% that the flowers were used in the centerpieces, it was obvious that the twenty arrangements were not placed throughout the reception hall as additional flowers – and based on the length of the flowers in the centerpieces it appeared they were placed in the centerpieces which indicates we were charged for flowers we never received. There was to be a rose for my mom, it was not present. Centerpieces were to be dominant of roses, adding accents of stock and hydrangea to add the additional size that we were seeking. The stock and hydrangea were to be used as accents only – this was reemphasized in an email to Jennifer Warner on May 12th which she confirmed in a response on May 15th. Jennifer responded “Centerpieces will have A LOT of roses and the stock and hydrangea will be accents…We will make it look pleasing to the eye and balanced,” to my clarifying statement “I want to double (okay, triple check) that they *centerpieces* will still be a majority roses with hydrangea & stock as accents.” When I arrived to the reception venue on our wedding day, I was dumbfounded that the arrangements were the opposite of the above description. They were majority hydrangea visible with accents of roses – and the vase was larger than the mock-up vase which made the floral arrangement appear extremely disproportioned. To add to the frustration, the flowers were wilted, had brown petals and appeared to have gone without water for a significant amount of time. The photo to the left was taken at the reception, the flowers, as you can see brown and wilted. Our wedding was a week ago and I still am extremely upset over the flowers. There were a few things that were extremely important to us – flowers were one of them and now they are something we wasted an abundance of money on. I respected that you are new to the industry and attempting to build your portfolio, however, the next time you try to eat and elephant I recommend you don’t do it in one bite or on someone’s wedding day. I would have much preferred you to tell us that you don’t have the supplier, talent or skill to fulfill our order instead of providing wilting, brown flowers, poor craftsmanship and complete variation on what we ordered. Sincerely,K3whitta