At the beginning stages of planning our wedding, I didn't know very much about flowers and hadn't decided what kind of flowers I MUST have at our wedding. My Fiancé and I were on a very tight budget for our wedding flowers. After some extensive... research my fiancé came up with some crafty, DIY centerpiece designs hoping to remain in line with our budget while still providing nice asthetics for our wedding. These centerpieces featured natural elements (that matched up quite well with simple greens and flowers I must say) yet were abstract…we hoped they would be a discussion starter for our guests. My finace’ created these natural/abstract centerpieces and other decorative items from the downed trees around our property (knocked over by the wrath of hurricane Irene). After making three different designs we met with the folks over at The Gateway Florists, to see if they could help us conceive of a way to incorporate flowers into these pieces and help us remain within our budget. They told us to work with Donna- a real mastermind of floral design. We set up an appointment with Donna, showed her our pieces and she began to consider ways to help make these cost effective and beautiful! She showed us some of her ideas, right on the spot, helping us to see what type of flowers could work with the pieces and from there we made a list of flowers and greens that we liked. We left one centerpiece with her and went home. She played around with some ideas she had and emailed us pictures of proposed floral designs, or mock ups- if you will. She was able to give us an idea of what she could do, but we still weren’t 100% sure of what they would look like. We invested our trust in her and when I saw the final product, sitting on our guest tables (and on our very own sweetheart table) I was so happy and proud! These centerpieces were a lot of work for my fiance' to make and for her to design. She did extraordinary work to make them gorgeous and interesting. Our guests loved the centerpieces! We asked our DJ to announce that our guest were welcomed to take the centerpieces home. Right away, I heard some one say "Oh! No Way! I got table #2 nobody better touch it!". I was later told that several guests ran to the tables, to snatch up these pieces and stow them into locked cars. It was all in good fun and no one got hurt (to my knowledge)! I was so happy that they were a hit.
Our other wedding florals were beautifully done as well. My bouquet was so pretty, the boutineers were so handsome, the corsages for the women in our wedding were stunning. I'm so anxious to get the photos back from our photographer to catch more glimpses of all of the florals that she did for us.
Not only was Donna great to work with, everyone in the shop was very welcoming, enthusiastic about these pieces, and very kind. We worked with the owner, Cindy and her husband on separate occasions and they were so accommodating.
I rate The Gateway Florist as an A+ organization. I would recommend this vendor to any Bride and Groom. They were wonderful to work with, they were affordable and they were gifted. Donna was very honest and accommodating. The best thing about her was that she didn't did not shy away from us when we told her our budget. She gave us ideas on how to stay with our limits and she didn't push us beyond that.