The Flower Gal

Reviews 3

A

A Private User

The quick and easy version of my review is that if you are a laid-back person and have no ideas of your own on what you want for flowers, Jose will be sure that you have a TON of beautiful flowers at a great price. If you have even a few flower preferences or will get stressed out by a perennially-tardy florist on your special day, find a different florist. The long story: We got married on Saturday, October 16th. After hearing good things by word-of-mouth, I was willing to overlook the negative reviews that I read online and the fact that he was an hour and a half late to our first meeting. I still had reservations, though, and because of that we got Jose to agree to terms that left 25% due when flowers were delivered to the sites. For $1000 he promised us 10 flower buckets hanging on the aisles, a decorated arch in the front of the church with an altar arrangement, 4 bridesmaid bouquets, a bridal bouquet, all of the corsages (wrist corsages for the moms, normal corsages for the grandmas) and boutonnieres, 3 arrangements for the reception site, a tossing bouquet and a kissing ball for the flower girl. I wanted bold fall colors, focusing on brown and rust-orange, and requested that the only white in my bouquet be the hypernicum berries he recommended. After 2 trial bridesmaid bouquets we were content, but looking at substituting half of the flowers in them for the ones that I wanted. I felt good about the situation after being involved in conversations with him both that Friday night and Saturday morning about some small changes he was making. At 10am Saturday morning, 4 hours before everything was supposed to be set up, it sounded like everything was going great. On top of being 2 hours late and supposedly getting lost 10 miles from the church, which threw off our time for pictures and created complete chaos, everything was wrong. I will say that the flowers were beautiful - plentiful and beautiful - but not what we had discussed and NOT what I wanted. To start, there were only 2 flower buckets for the aisles instead of 10, and they were hideous (we took them down). There was no arch and no altar arrangement, but at least 6 giant arrangements set up at the front of the church. Unfortunately, instead of the eggplant purple calla lillies and rust gerber daisies in the arrangements, the flowers were lavendar and light orange. Thank God my bridesmaids wore brown so it didnt completely clash, but they were very, very wrong. The kissing ball that we were told would be made out of miniature roses was primarily a great big ball of ferns (by the way, I wanted as little greenery as possible) with some roses sticking out of it, and it was almost bigger than our flower girl. It certainly weighed more than she did. We had to scrap it and send her down the aisle with a couple of flowers picked out of it. There were no wrist corsages. The bridesmaid bouquets had none of my rust gerbers, but were full of bright, bright orange gerbers, which I had explicitly stated that I hated. Finally, my bridal bouquet was centered around white lillies. It looked lovely, but it was absolutely against everything we discussed. If all of that wasnt bad enough, when we got to the reception there was no tossing bouquet. A friend used some of the silk flowers from the centerpieces we made ourselves and grabbed some out of one of the bridesmaid bouquets to make up a quick, last-minute bouquet to throw. Finally, when my mom called him after the wedding to discuss the final payment and register her disgust, Jose started screaming at her about "people like you" and hung up on her, before she could even tell him everything that was wrong. I would still like to have a reasonable conversation with him about it, but I couldnt have been much more disappointed.

A

A Private User

I just got married this past Friday, October 8th, 2010 and I feel so compelled to write a review because my experience with the Flower Guys was absolutely perfect. 1. Fun Factor: I had a blast working with Jose and the other guy (Jim I think?) They cracked me up and made me feel relaxed about the whole floral process. 2. Style / Taste: I really didnt know what exact flowers I wanted, but I knew the look I wanted and they translated my vision perfectly. I told them that I wanted: "rustic" "fall" "MN wildflower" looking bouquets and arrangements and they turned out more gorgeous then I could have ever expected. 3. Quantity: My bouquets, arrangements, boutonnieres, wristletts, corsages were HUGE. I was overwhelmed with the amount of beautiful flowers in each one. 4. Quality: Its now Monday and all of the flowers are still alive, perky, fresh and beautiful. In fact, some of them are still blooming! 5. Price: Are you kidding me? I got estimates from 4 other flower vendors and they were all more than DOUBLE the price of Flower Guys. These guys saved me so much money! 6: Customer Service: Jose had me come in several times before my wedding to take a look at a bouquet and an arrangement that he made up for me for free. I was able to tell him what I liked and didnt like about it. I loved being part of the process and it was great to be able to put some input into it to make sure I got just what I wanted. Also, Jose called me on the morning of my wedding to let me know that the flowers turned out beautiful and that they were out for delivery to the church. I was still getting my hair done, so it totally put me at ease to know that the flowers were one thing that I did not have to worry about at all! :) 7. Timeliness: Like I just mentioned, everything was delivered with more than enough time to spare. The flowers were in water so they were kept very fresh and they even gave me extra boutonnieres just in case! The Flower Guys were recommended to me by my new husbands cousin who also used them for her wedding and for her mothers funeral. I am so so so glad that I listened to her and not these reviews, because I truly was surprised, delighted, and overwhelmed with this experience. I will never ever use another florist in MN and in fact, I will probably just stop in to visit these guys because they are that entertaining and fun! If anyone has any other questions, feel free to hit me up on Twitter at Nicholah. - Nichol Hanson

A

A Private User

I was extremely disappointed in the lack of professionalism, timeliness, and courtesy of the MN Flower Guys. I am the on site coordinator for a wedding venue and have NEVER seen such a terrible display of professionalism in all my years in the industry. The guy delivering the flowers LIED to the bride when she called 3 hours before the wedding to find out where her flowers were. He told her hed have her flowers to her in 40 minutes. 40 minutes came and went and it was time for pictures - still no flowers OR table centerpieces. After another hour went by I took matters into my own hands. After speaking to the gentleman delivering the flowers he assured me they would be there within the hour. (At this point it was 2PM, ceremony was scheduled for 4PM.) 3PM comes and goes and still no flowers. The poor bride was fit to be tied! 3:30 rolls around and still no word. I call AGAIN! "Well be there in 5 minutes!" (Yea, like I believe that!) Finally we see their van pull up at 3:55! (Ceremony starts in 5 minutes.) They open the van and the flowers practically FELL out of it. They had been stuffed in the back along with some trash bags and gasoline cans. We had to postpone the (outdoor) ceremony for nearly 15 minutes to get the groomsmen and family pinned with corsages. While the ceremony was taking place the Flower Guys were to be putting out the table centerpieces. Now, I wasnt expecting much from them at this point, but I DID expect the flowers to at least be somewhat assembled. They werent. They required 4 of our service staff members to help them assemble the table centerpieces just so they would be set up in time for the reception. All in all, I would never recommend this company to any bride. From what I witnessed they have TERRIBLE communication skills, zero organization, and a total disregard for the most special day of a couples life.