Yes, now that my bridesmaids' dresses were ordered and one of the colors of my wedding palette written in stone, it was time to find a florist. And none of them wanted to do a wedding the day before the mother of all floral days.
Using lists of recommended vendors from Grand Marquis, The Palace at Somerset Park, and Jeff Tisman's website, I probably contacted a good dozen or so florists. Of those only 3 were even willing to discuss a wedding that would be taking place the day before Mother's Day. They were Rose Petals and Lace, Marquis Florals, and Dahlia Floral Concepts.
My first appointment was with Linda at Rose Petals and Lace, which she actually runs out of her home. I came armed with the photos of the lilac and lavender bouquets that I saw in the Spring Wedding Ideas video on The Knot, swatches of the Jim Hjelm honeydew fabric, and photos of my wedding gown and our ceremony site, as well as photos of flowers that I liked for my own bouquet.
Linda seemed nice enough but my mom and I both got the impression that she was a little, shall we say, set in her ways? Our idea at the time was to have each girl carry a monochromatic bouquet featuring a different flower (one girl would carry lavender parrot tulips, one girl would carry lavender anemones, etc) and then my bouquet would have all 5 flower varieties together. But it seemed like Linda wasn't used to getting requests for things that weren't "pink roses and white stephanotis with jeweled centers."
A large percentage of her portfolio was this type of bouquet, and I wanted to gag every time she flipped the page to show me another one. There is no wedding flower I find more boring than roses, especially red/pink/white ones, and ESPECIALLY when paired with jeweled stephanotis (the little star-shaped white flowers you often see in bridal bouquets). A wedding should be a chance to show a little creativity, not to have your bouquet look just like Suzie Q's from down the street.
Nevertheless, Linda said she would e-mail me an estimate to review. To date it is almost a month after my wedding, and a year after I met with Linda, and I still have not received the estimate, ha ha. Oh well, if she wasn't interested in my business, I wasn't interested in hiring her. And besides, I should have known to run for ze hills when she pronounced "anemones" as "AH-moh-neez." (It's "ah-NEH-moh-neez.")
OK, so that florist was a definite "no." I then decided to rethink my bouquet plans. I wasn't so jazzed about the monochromatic, monofloral bouquets anymore, and I didn't think I wanted to carry a colored bouquet myself. So this was the new plan: a bouquet of white anemones (with black centers) for me, and bouquets of lavender anemones, tulips, sweet peas, lilacs, and other non-rose flowers for the girls.
Our next appointment was at Marquis Florals, who was recommended by Grand Marquis. I instantly felt better about my floral situation. They had a pretty showroom and the woman I spoke with (JoAnn, I think) was very nice and had a lot of good ideas, plus a much more varied portfolio than I saw at Rose Petals and Lace. They also had the added benefit of being relatively close to Grand Marquis and being very familiar with the space, since they were recommended vendors. My heart did sink a little when JoAnn admitted that anemones most likely wouldn't be available in May though; she said they were more of a winter bloom. Oh well. Nevertheless, I liked Marquis Florals very much and they were a strong contender. (John was really rooting for them too because they were located directly across the street from Big Ed's BBQ, ha ha.) JoAnn also said that she would e-mail me an estimate, and she did--the next day!
I did have one more appointment though, and I was most excited about this one. Dahlia Floral Concepts was on Jeff Tisman's list of recommended vendors, and my bridesmaid Libby was familiar with their shop since she lived near by. Libby accompanied me for the appointment and we were greeted by Adriene, the shop owner, and her extremely friendly orange cat, Bubbles. The shop was beautiful and so was Adriene's portfolio. When she asked how I found her and I mentioned Jeff, she raved about him and how great he was to work with. I also asked her about the anemones and she said that it was true that they could be hard to come by that late in the spring, but she was confident that if they could be "gotten," her sources would get them. She warned me that we wouldn't have a definite answer until the week of the wedding though, so she recommended that we come up with a "Plan B" that I would love equally as much. Adriene was familiar with both our ceremony and reception sites, and we even discussed some ideas for centerpieces while we were there. She wrote out the estimate there and then for me.
So now I had a tough decision to make. I originally feared that my pre-Mother's Day wedding date would leave me without a florist, and now here I was debating between two great ones. Their prices were pretty comparable too, which made the decision even harder. In the end I chose Dahlia. I figured that I could trust Jeff's recommendation more than Grand Marquis' because he would be the one actually photographing all of the flowers. There's no way he would recommend a florist whose flowers were all yucky, right? Right.
Adriene and the staff at Dahlia were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were very prompt in returning calls and emails and their work was just exquisite. I really couldn't have asked for a better florist.
But did I get my anemones after all? What about the girls' lavender bouquets? Stay tuned to find out ;-)
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