I should preface this review by saying that I didn't actually use Flower Allie for my wedding, but had a bad experience with her and want to warn other prospective clients.

Based on the PW reviews, Allie was the first florist I met with since I was pretty sure she was going to be "The One". Things started off a little shaky since she had forgotten that we had a meeting scheduled, but they improved from there (except for the part where she made vaguely negative comments about our coordinator and boasted that she "won't do weddings" for a certain other coordinator we talked about).

We spent more than 2 hours going over flowers and vases and candles and such, and at the end she gave me a rough estimate of how much the flowers would be and told me she would e-mail me a detailed estimate later that day. We talked about how to pay the deposit, and I walked away feeling that I had found my florist.

A few hours went by and I didn't receive the estimate I sent Allie an e-mail to follow up with her and to reiterate my interest in working with her....and I never heard back from her.

Maybe she decided that she didn't want to work with me, which is fine, but I wish she hadn't wasted 2 hours of my time. I took an entire morning off work to meet with Allie, only to have to start again at square one with other florists because she never got back to me. Plus, I felt that certain things she said were a little brash and unprofessional. And to top it off, her rough estimate was a good $800 more than we actually spent on our flowers, leading me to believe that she is a bit on the pricey side.

Maybe we would have had a great experience had she gotten back to me and done the flowers for our wedding, but I feel that her non-responsiveness and lack of follow-up is not acceptable for a business owner catering to the wedding industry.

PS - One interesting thing I have noticed is that although most of Allie's PW reviews are positive, running a quick Google on "Flower Allie" yields some mixed results to say the least.

We used Melanie from Bella Blooms for our wedding and, despite some hiccups during the planning process, the flowers at our wedding were BEAUTIFUL! I felt there were times that Melanie could have been a little more responsive, especially in the 1-2 weeks leading up to the wedding, which stressed me out a bit. But I must say that as soon as I saw the bouquets the day of the wedding, I was instantly happy and relieved.

The bouquets turned out amazing and exactly like the pictures I showed Melanie, and I literally could not stop starting at the centerpieces during the reception because they were that pretty. Plus, Melanie really worked with our budget - our final bill was a good $500 under the lowest quote we had gotten from another florist, but it looked like we totally splurged on the flowers. Bella didn't skimp at all, and we got lots of compliments on the flowers.

If you're a little Type A like me, the slowness of some of the communications might bother you. But if you can get past this (or aren't as high-strung as yours truly), I highly recommend Bella Blooms.

Damon was our only real splurge vendor, and we picked him based on all of these PW reviews. Maybe my expectations were too high, but I was a little disappointed the day of the wedding. He unexpectedly cut our first dance song 1.5 minutes short, which was very upsetting to us. He also flubbed the name of the best man (introducing him with the name of one of the other groomsmen).

We had spent hours upon hours coming up with a comprehensive "must play" song list per Damon's request, but we did not hear half of the songs on the list (though to Damon's credit, there was only about an hour of dancing after dinner before the guests started leaving in droves). Also, the first 6-8 songs he played were all modern, fast songs, which I felt alienated some of the older guests, most of whom left pretty quickly after the dancing started (I think because there weren't any songs that appealed to them). Contrary to the other reviewers, our dance floor was pretty empty, which I think was in part due to the fact that there was little variety in the type of music he played. Damon also did not play any of the slow songs on our list, to the point where we had to have our coordinator go to him and request that he mix some slow songs in there.

There were some good points - Damon did a great job with the dinner music, provided good guidance during the song selection process, and as other reviewers have stated, he is not cheesy at all. But I feel that I can't recommend him given the fact that we will never be able to have our full first dance back, and because I didn't feel that there was much variety in the type of music he played in the first 20-30 minutes, which really set the tone for the wedding.

What can I say that hasn't already been said about Katrina? Her work was beautiful, with several different fonts and ink colors to choose from. She was very flexible and accommodating, and her prices are great. We live an hour away and dropped our invitations off in the morning, had lunch in Pasadena, and picked them up later that afternoon. The calligraphy on the outer envelopes made a huge impact, and we got lots of compliments on the calligraphy. She also offers other services (invitations, menu cards, programs), but we just used her basic services to address our envelopes. Great work and well worth the money!