Love and Lupines Floral Design

a breakdown in communication. We hope anyone reading your review will also read our response so they can receive the full story behind the review. We did reach out to your venue planner & the team that was onsite the day of your wedding setting up so we could clearly understand any issues that you mentioned in your review. We have gone through each line item on your signed & final floral proposal to compare it to your list of complaints. We would like to share a little further background into each complaint in hopes of explaining our side of the story. As you know, we did share this with you privately in hopes that it would help you to re-evaluate your review but we wanted to share this publicly so future clients can make an educated decision about moving forward with us. 1. I reviewed all the communication between yourself & my team. I hate that you felt attacked in any way as that was not our intention. In fact, our team felt quite attacked throughout the order finalizing process as we were constantly being questioned about our pricing & sales tax which is not what typically happens with our clients. The amount of communication we received regarding decreasing pricing was well over the average amount of communication we have with our clients. Your proposal had 13 versions, which is about 3 times the number of revisions we typically have for our clients when it comes to proposals. We had all of your prices set at our minimums that we need to operate & provide a product that meets our standards, but we made some exceptions & went lower on a few pieces to help meet your budget. While executing all of this in such a unique venue space that requires a lot of extra time and experienced staff to properly execute. The tram process alone takes an additional 1.5-2 hours for loading in and again for loading out and again for loading in and out for clean-up. This is an additional 6-8 hours for multiple staff members that is not a cost we have when working at other venues that do not have a tram ride. To put this into prospective for you I pay my team $25-30 per hour plus I pay payroll taxes on top of these wages so the overall cost is generally $30-35 per hour per staff member, I paid my 4 team members to deliver and 2 to break down so just the hours for riding the tram/elevators/waiting on the tram cost me $720 just to have the additional hours needed to get up and down the tram with your order and clean up. This does not include the hours they were actually working to set up you’re wedding or the time to break it down and clean it up or the time it takes to drive to and from the shop or the gas or the additional time it took to deliver your personal pieces to two different locations. We do also generally charge an additional $50 fee to deliver personal pieces to two different addresses, but we waived this fee to help accommodate your budget & decrease cost requests. Typically, we do charge more for High Camp weddings, however I was really trying to be respectful of you and your budget and we never included our additional High Camp fees that we generally charge and did charge to every other High Camp Bride we had this year except for you. I made a lot of alterations to our prices that I did not share with you to try to make you feel comfortable when booking. We included rental items such as ceremony pedestals and votive candles that we normally charge rental fees to try to help with your budget. We did a lot at the backend, and I know you are not aware of these things, but I feel it's very important that I share this with you. Since you came as a personal recommendation from a florist friend of ours (who happens to have a $9,500 minimum for her floral services, and we typically operate with similar budgets) however it was important to me to try to accommodate you since you are like family to her. I really tried hard to make your budget work with our minimums. We know you were paying for your own wedding flowers and that this was a big spending item for you, I have been in the wedding industry for 20 years and I respect a couple that pays for everything on their own. That is a big deal, and you should be proud that you could do that. We tried to be as gracious and helpful as possible. However, you made us feel like a used car dealership by trying to negotiate our pricing and services. It was REALLY hard on our end too and not something that made me, or my wedding specialist Alyssa feel very comfortable. So once again I only stepped in to help clarify and wanted to be sure you knew we are only collecting sales taxes on items that are required by the state of California, labor for the set/strike and processing all must be taxed. You responded to my email, and I can only go off your response. If you needed to speak more about this, I would have been happy to explain further or differently or to set up a time to chat with you. I do not typically do our planning sessions and communications, but I work with Alyssa closely on all of them and get email notifications with each entry into honeybook so I am included in all of the communication and do pay attention and step in when I feel it is needed. I always make time if someone asks or needs to speak with me and would have been happy to chat with you if you had needed that and expressed it. Furthermore, Alyssa did address your email and you seemed happy with everything, so we thought everything was okay moving into the wedding weekend. 2. For the boutonnieres, I think there was some confusion with the two different deliveries, no one knows where they went but we did have 13 boutonnieres plus 2 mini bouts when they left the shop & were delivered. I made them myself and they were all fresh and beautiful. I made the 12 you paid for plus 1 extra. Something strange happened and I am not sure how they did not make it to where they needed to be. The very moment my staff was made aware of this issue my lead designer immediately made two new ones to make sure everyone had flowers. I am very sorry if your planner questioned anything or had an old copy of a contract and that you felt you had to prove that you ordered them to get more. It is the planner’s responsibility to make sure they have the most updated contract. This did not come from my team and as soon as we knew what was going on we did all we could to make it right on the spot. 3. As mentioned above, I have refunded you for 2 boutonnieres and you should see this credit back to you within the next week if it hasn't already been processed. I hope this helps alleviate some of the burden from your complaints. 4. The cocktail table bud vases were all delivered. 7 in total. They were all placed on the tables by my staff. It was incredibly windy, so they added sand to the inside and double-sided sticky tape to the bottom. They were all out on the tables and holding up great when my team left. I have shared a photo with you privately of them in place prior to our teams departure. The venue planner and your planner moved them inside after my team left as they said they were blowing over and were afraid they were going to continue to do so as the wind increased. It can be incredibly windy at High Camp and although we try our very best sometimes Mother Nature sometimes has other plans. I also sent a photo of one of your bud vases inside so you can see once again that they were there and utilized. There were 7 of them in white bud vases plus the additional 3 in clear bud vases that were used inside as planned. 4. My designers had a very hard time with your welcome sign. It was a very light weight flimsy piece of foam board. It was on a very simple easel, and neither could accommodate the weight of the desired sign design. They spent a chunk of time trying and decided to add something simple that could hold and use the extra greens and flowers that you paid for on your seating chart sign. So, all the material was there and used and your seating chart sign got decorated too, which my team and your planner each thought was a great solution to the problem. As mentioned above, Last night I did also refund you for the sign as you feel this was missed and do not see the value was added into a different sign. I’ve also sent a photo of the seating chart sign that received the additional floral and greens. 5. I also chatted with my team about the garland. After reviewing my order and notes with the team I had added 5 extra feet of garland for your head table ( free of charge) I once again wanted everything to look great for you and since you did not have any decor outside of candles and empty vases planned for your head table we wanted to add a little extra something directly in front of the two of you to make you feel special and to enhance your space. The head table or sweetheart table is generally one of our most decorated items, so it felt strange to all of us to have it bare. My team when setting, pulled 2 feet of garland from the 12-foot table, and added that to your head table too to make it look more even and full. Your planners seemed very happy with this and thought it all looked beautiful. I am sorry we did not run this by you and that it was a point of stress, we were trying to make your florals more elevated and spread them further and did not intend for this to be taken as us not completing your requests or leaving out details. Typically, a client’s planner is responsible on the day of approving any changes that happen design-wise which we did receive from her. I did refund you 2 feet of garland for the 12-foot table that had 8 feet instead of 10 even though all the garland was there. I have sent a photo of the head table so you can see how great it looked with these items on it. 6. My team did also include a lot of extra things that I want to be sure you are aware of. I have sent photos of all that I have photos of. a. You ordered and paid for 25 stems of flowers for your photobooth boxwood hedge. we installed 65 stems of flowers for this space. More than 2x what you paid to ensure it looked amazing and that there was enough product to make a nice statement. This was all extra product I ordered and paid for and did not charge you for and most of it was very high-end roses. Between the actual product and additional installation and breakdown time this was a $200 value that we included for you. b. You paid for 3 bar lights to be accented with greenery, we added greenery to 4 lights rather than 3. c. You paid for a 4-foot section of garland behind the dance floor, and we installed 6 feet. d. We added extra greens and flowers around the stations that were set around the room to help them look nicer. I did send you a photo of this. I truly hope you can see that our team did our best to make your day as perfect as possible given the budget restraints. We felt that we over-delivered your order & were very disappointed to hear you felt the opposite, especially after how much work our team put into your wedding day & leading up to it.