Issue With Florist and Communication

I think white flowers will be fine. Peonies are expensive. You'll have some blush in them?

It is important to be true to yourself and speak up about your interests and questions. One way to get on the same page with the florist could be to create a sample of colors that you know you want in your bouquet, and to let her know not to stray out of those colors. You get the opportunity to fine tune what you don’t want in the bouquets and in the boutonnières. It’s sucks that she’s being blunt and not communicating with you, but if you are going to work with her you may just have to swallow her “quirks” and just make sure she gives you what you ask for. You might have to be more direct and blunt right back with her.

Wow, I so identify with this. But it's not my florist, it's the event coordinator at my venue.

So over the top bubbly when we met and toured the space, we booked on the spot because it is seriously my dream venue. I emailed her a few times since then with some random questions, just things I'm curious about, not trying to nail anything down just yet, and she's very short with me. It actually hurt my feelings, though I tried to comfort myself by telling myself that I am still so far out from my wedding (over a year), so she is just preoccupied with other weddings that are closer to now, maybe even happening this weekend. I'm not trying to be annoying with questions, I'm just really so excited about all the details, and I'm not expecting novel-long responses either. Just maybe full sentences lol

At the end of the day, even with other weddings going on all the time, I do think that a better attempt could be made, especially considering what the venue is costing us. We would just like to be taken care of a little bit better throughout this process.

With your wedding being in March she should be providing you a free mockup this month so you can see what you have both decided upon. You will want to make sure she has it exactly as you want it before the wedding. You are paying her for a service. I would keep contacting her but also remain nice. Also make sure she is living up to all she said she would do in your contract. You don't want to risk her messing things up. I'm having a communication problem with my design coordinator who has ignored my email for a month and i have 6 months to go and i have no idea what table cloths i need or anything. I had to send her a stern email about 4 days ago, no response. However, i'll continue to wait as i have time. I know in floral they like to wait until the end to make changes and solidify details.

Wow! I can definitely identify with you. My florist was very fun and bubbly with us. After our deposit she just shutdown. We had to change our wedding date because we bought a home and she was not happy about us decreasing our floral plan. We went the first week in January to change the flowers and said she would send us our new quote after the weekend, well it's been a month and she still hasn't sent it. When I called her she blew me off. I only called once.

Sometimes you just feel as though you want the best for the day and not break the bank too. I'm sure her job is overwhelming as she probably has many clients but I think it's important to just be kind and honest no matter what. So @PrettyinPink I really get it!

I remember some of this feeling - it seems very close to you but for florists they really don't focus on a wedding until much closer to the actual date. I would spend some time with your fiance, figure out exactly what you want if there are changes you want, send her an email with those, let her know you are sure they have the timeline in which she plans to address these questions and you hope she can give you some guidance. I did a lot of letting vendors know I did not know what I was doing - they were more helpful with that.

She is likely not meaning to be blunt but does this all the time and has a timeline in mind of which she will manage your wedding.

Not to play devils advocate, but florists can be super quirky. I would just let her know that you are a visual person and are having a hard time understanding her vision from your descriptions. Apologize for asking so many questions, let her know you understand she has other clients but you would appreciate some time to clear things up so you understand what she is saying/doing. Let her know that your FMIL who is supposed to help you had challenged your ideas and it left you confused and that’s why you made some changes. Tell her that the two of you will come up with the look together and stick with that plan.
The only thing you can do is to be super honest, respectful and patient.
Good luck

View Quoted Comment

The issue is, after the 50% payment is put down she cannot decrease anything or change anything really (unless I add more things, of course) so I cannot wait much longer. She is irritating the crap out of me...

In that case, I would absolutely do what Melissa recommends. Be honest about your personal difficulties here. Come up with one set of all the changes you may want. I know you can't go in but explain why this seems to be a lot of issues/changes and ask politely for her support/help. I would think that would inspire her to be more helpful. At the end of the day she is going to want you to be satisfied since so much business comes from word of mouth and yelp/WW/knot reviews. Every vendor I had asked me multiple times to leave reviews on multiple sites. I think your best bet is being honest and trying to streamline your questions/requests as much as possible!

Wait until after Valentine's Day and contact her again. She's absolutely swamped right now and will be until the 15th.

I so feel you, girl! I've had several issues with mine as well. She's a super sweet person in person and over the phone, but I had a very difficult time perfecting my plan with her. We initially met over a year ago and wrote out a preliminary plan. I made a couple of changes right after our meeting, which she said she'd change on our plan and would forward to me. When I received it, several things weren't changed. I decided to let it go for the time being since we were so far out and I wondered if I'd change my mind on anything else. Flash forward to last week, I reached out to her to see if we could schedule a meeting to go over the plan again now that we're six weeks out, tweak anything, and make it final. When I initially asked her about this meeting, I meant in person so I could see the plan and see her make the changes and make sure she got my vision. She ended up calling me that same day and just wanted to do it over the phone. I thought I had been very clear about what colors, florals, amounts, etc. that I wanted over the phone, but, again, when I received the plan I noticed there were several things she didn't change/add/take away. We ended up emailing back and forth probably a good twenty times just in the past four days because I was adamant that she get the plan right. I KNOW I annoyed her, but it's now only six weeks till my wedding and I'm paying quite a bit for her services, so I needed to ensure she absolutely had it correct. The whole thing could've just been resolved in one sitting had we just met in person, or had she been listening to me on that first phone call.

I don't want my vendors to get annoyed with me because I love them all, but when my FH and I and our families are paying an arm and leg for this wedding I expect things to be done correctly and for vendors to make themselves available (just for one single meeting) to ensure everything from the product to the prices are correct. I know exactly what I want at this point in the planning and I'm not going to shrink myself down to placate anyone. Like, why bother planning if you get steamrolled over and don't get what you want?

I have learned over the years that no one is going to speak up for me, but me. It took some time to really embrace what that meant, and becoming an attorney helped me learn to articulate my position with confidence and be direct in my communication, but it wasn't easy and took time. I had some issues with my venue's coordinator. She replaced the coordinator I met when I toured the venue, and she never seemed to take my wedding seriously. At the menu tasting in October, I covered a lot of details with her, but by November (a month before my wedding) she was asking me the same questions. I finally called her out on it and after clearly going through very detailed examples of how she had failed me as the venue's coordinator, she apologized and gave me several things for free for my wedding. After that very frank discussion she was on top of things and treated me more seriously. Before that I think she just saw someone she could just walk all over because I only turn on my "attorney persona" when I need it. I understand the florist is busy, but your wedding is next month. Now is the time for her to give you the attention you need to hammer out your flowers. You are paying her for a job and want that job to be executed according to your specific instructions. Don't be afraid to speak up.

Having worked in various aspects of the wedding industry for almost a decade, let me play devil's advocate here and ask- are these questions you REALLY need to be asking or is this something you can be figuring out on your own? A lot of times brides get into this mindset of "I'm paying this person for my wedding"....but so are probably 400 other brides that year. So imagine the amount of emails she gets with someone asking "Do you think this shade of pink is going to match my bridesmaid swatches I sent you" when there's no guaranteeing 100% what shade a flower is going to be because they aren't silk. Those questions just aren't a priority, when she's also trying to run a shop and deal with 400 other brides, because she probably doesn't have time to hand hold and talk you through your decision making process.

Instead of asking a billion questions, try making a decision and then sending her actual instructions. Example: "I spent some time looking at photos of bridesmaids with white flowers, and don't like the way it looks. Can we change it to pink hydrangea, please?"

Wow, this is why I did everything myself for my wedding, only vendors are chair rental, bakery and caterer. DJ is my fiance's good friend so he doesn't need to be managed. My brother is my day-of. It's a small wedding so I'm not trying to compare apples to oranges, but if I had to reply on a lot of vendors I would be stressed out!!!!