When I first got quotes on flowers, I really liked Kate and one other person. I decided to go with Kate because she seemed to "get" my vision more than the other person. We emailed back and forth with no problems for a while. I had noticed that on my quote, calla lilies were not included on the listing of flowers. I emailed her to make sure they'd be included because they fit in with the theme we were going for. She said no problem because our pricing was for premium flowers like peonies and orchids, so callas would be in the same category.

As things went along, it seemed like she was not writing down anything we talked about. When it came time to create my sample centerpiece I asked about the callas again. She said it would make my centerpieces $10 more expensive a piece. I was shocked, but had no recourse re: the previous email because my computer had died and I lost all my emails in Outlook. I went to Kate's home for our meeting only to discover when I got there, she had MOVED and not told me! She moved in December and it was March when we had our meeting. I had spent HOURS in traffic from West LA to Sherman Oaks for that! Once I got Kate on the phone and got directions to her new home in Valley Village, I was on my way, but I was irritated about the lack of professionalism on that front. I forgot about all this when I saw my sample centerpiece and LOVED it so much that I cried a little when I saw it. I mean, I had the inspiration for it and told her what I wanted, but she created exactly what I'd envisioned.

When we had our final meeting, I wanted us to go out to my church because she'd never worked there before. She told me that I'd be charged for her travel time and a babysitter for her daughter. She said she could work from pictures of the church. I was disappointed because her contract said that we could combine a visit to a site she'd never worked with the final visit, but I just let it go. At the final meeting, she pulled out the old, original quote from August (this was late May) and had no notes of anything we'd talked about. So we had to review it all again. Her daughter was there and while a lovely child, she really shouldn't be in on business meetings. She was basically destroying the ostrich plumes I'd bought to go in my bouquets and centerpieces because she was crushing and twisting them all around while Kate just sat and didn't notice or comment. My fiance had to leave the meeting and take Gracie (her daughter) outside into the yard to look at the birds and stuff because even he was peturbed at the destruction of our stuff. At the meeting, Kate also told me my set up fee would likely be significantly higher because I was asking her to set up bud vases and feather centerpieces (all pieces I bought) on the 8 cocktail tables. This was never said before...in fact, she'd always offered to just put them up and never said anything about charging. I also asked her to include the set up costs for some rice paper lanterns because I wasn't sure if the hotel was going to be able to do it (and then let her know later on that the hotel would be doing it, so she didn't need to bother).

She also said that we may need to pay more for set-up because we needed her to drop off the personal flowers at the hotel first, then go to the church to set up for the ceremony, then back to the hotel to set up for the reception. However, it had ALWAYS been the case because we had ALWAYS planned to do pro pics at the hotel before the ceremony. Her description of the size of the bouquets had been specific (i.e. 11 inches in diameter) previously, but when we met again, her descriptions of the bouquets were much smaller, probably 2/3 or less of the size she'd previously stated. My mistake, I should have made sure it was in the quote to start. The bouquet size was important to me because I'm by no means a small girl and my bridesmaids are big booty girls, too :D I thought a small bouquet would look ridiculous against larger hips and had said so before.

The meeting was on a Saturday in the late morning/early afternoon and really, it was just deleting and slightly changing some details on the original quote, something that literally takes less than 30 minutes because the document is already created in Word. She said I'd have the final quote soon. On Tuesday, my coordinator called her and left a message. She also emailed her to find out the status of the quote. Kate did not return her call or email. I tried calling her Wednesday with no response. I left Kate a voicemail on Thursday. All this time, none of us had heard from her. On Friday, she called me while I was in the middle of class and I ran out into the hall to speak with her because it had been a week since she'd touched base. She told me then that she had not worked on our final quote at all because she was busy with work. I was stunned because this convo could have been had before and I wished she would have told me earlier. She asked to have until Monday (Memorial Day) and I agreed, mostly because I was too shocked to say otherwise and was in the middle of class and didn't have time for an argument. During the conversation, she said that she had a floral designer out sick all week and she'd been really busy...but too busy to shoot me a 30 second email or quick phone call to give me a heads up when I'd been trying to get ahold of her for several days????

I emailed her on Saturday and said that I needed her to have the quote for me by Sunday at 8PM or I'd be looking for another florist. I was really concerned she was going to jack my prices way up, partly because I'd read the story of another bride who used Kate whose final quote went up by several THOUSAND dollars and that was just not in my budget. She sent me the final quote on Monday at about 3PM or so. I already had another florist appointment that morning. During this week, Kate emailed me THREE times...I couldn't buy an email the week before, but when she sensed there was trouble, she was overly persistant.

I agonized over the decision and ultimately, we decided to use another florist and only have Kate create our bouts and corsages in order to use the $250 we paid her without cancelling and having to pay her another $1000+ with no product. This really was a difficult decision for me to make and one I was really upset about. Literally, I cried because I don't like to hurt people's feelings and upset them, but I didn't trust her to do a good, professional job with our wedding.

That is when she went from slightly unprofessional but harmless, to wildly unprofessional, bordering on harrassing. She called my cell phone and left me a 5 minute voicemail where she accused me of stealing her ideas and taking them to another florist to create and basically just bitched me out. I couldn't listen to the voicemail right away, so my fiance listened to it. I could hear her YELLING from a couple of feet away through the earpiece as he listened. This voicemail was listened to by several people who can attest to the veracity of this. As I said before, there was no truth to me stealing her ideas since anything she created was all MY inspiration and guidance. An email followed that was erratic and went from trying to explain her poor behavior almost tearfully, mentioning how we were "friends" to threatening legal action.

Kate wrote me an email on June 9 where she tried to explain herself (after her rude and unprofessional voicemail and email on June 3) and asked me to explain my rationale. She admits in this email that she hadn't even started on my revisions as of Thursday of that week and that's when her designer called in sick...so the excuse of being overwhelmingly busy due to a sick assistant for Sunday-Wednesday doesn't hold water. She alluded to us being "friends" and having a "friendship", but it was basically a guilt trip, as her first email back to me after finding out I wanted to cancel, she referenced taking legal action.

Against the judgment of others who I'd asked for advice, I decided to write her an email where I basically explained the aforementioned concerns I had. In my email I started with, "Kate, I have decided to respond to this message because hopefully this issue can be put to rest after doing so." and ended with "Anyway, I hope this response helps you move on in some way and understand where we're coming from. I can't say that I'm completely confident that I will get my flowers with no hassle, but I am trusting you to be a professional in this situation." (this was in reference to her saying to trust that we would still get great flowers that we were paying for).

She basically lost it at this point and wrote me back a really snippy and rude email. She ended with, "Okay, I'm so done. Your flowers will be gorgeous, of course I am a professional. Please direct any further correspondence you have with me through Mistyka or Denise. [my coordinator and her assistant]" So yes, she was refusing to communicate with me, her client.

I really feared not getting a good product from her. She said in an email to me on June 11 that she was very angry with me, which is why she acted in an unprofessional manner. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that the unprofessionalism would extend to the end-product.

In the end it didn't matter since we postponed our wedding, but her behavior was so far from professional overall that I would not recommend her to anyone.

Also, I have an email from a former bride with her situation with Kate as well. In that case, Kate raised her prices by a large margin shortly before the wedding and when Christina tried to negotiate the prices down and change/eliminate items to fit her budget, Kate CANCELLED on her TWO WEEKS BEFORE HER WEDDING! Her wedding was on Memorial Day weekend, so it was tough for her to find another florist. So just be forewarned that it is not just one person who is/was unhappy with Kate's service.

Dress: A++++++
RKBridal: D

My dress was set to be into their New York store on April 2 and in their initial email to me, I was told to expect the dress to my apartment in LA about a week to 10 days after that. Around April 20, I got concerned and called the store. They said the dress was shipped and I should call back for a tracking number. I call back for the tracking number the following day and was told that the dress had NOT shipped and they did not know where my dress was! Mind you, they are under the impression that my wedding is July 9, 2005 (our original date when I ordered).

After a couple days of calling to harrass them (because they never called with status updates), they finally figured out the dress got sent back to Christina Wu. I finally got the dress, it's in good condition...actually, it's absolutely GORGEOUS and MUCH prettier than the ad pictures. The only reason RKBridal gets a D instead of an F is because they price matched the lowest price I found plus gave me an extra 5% off.