Flower Art from Our Heart

I had the pleasure of having Cynthia provide flowers for both my bridal shower and wedding. Upon meeting Cynthia and going over what I had in mind for a vision she instantly got me :)

I love color and variety and she really helped me find the right touch to complement the whole day. I couldnt have asked for anything more beautiful then what she did... The centerpeices were so colorful and really made everything stand out. My bouquet was drop dead gorgeous and she even made me fresh flowers to put in my hair. I plan to use her for all my flower needs in the future and look forward to working with her again :)

Thanks so making my day so special!

Cynthia is a true artist...she created the most beautiful centerpieces for our wedding reception, along with the bouquets for my family and wedding party...the Manzanita tree she put on our guest book table was gorgeous!!!...I definitely recommend anyone looking for a florist for any type of event to use Flower Art...a perfect look for our special day...thanks Cynthia!

It's been over 6 months since my wedding and I've had a lot of conflict in my mind about whether or not to leave a review. I like Cynthia a lot and she is clearly incredibly talented; she is also very nice. However, there were some very serious problems with how she runs her business and, specifically for my wedding, how she chose to handle some issues.

All along leading up to choosing a florist and finalizing ideas related to the flowers, I had a lot of trouble. I LOVE flowers and had some very specific ideas in my head about what I thought would look good. Cynthia was very patient with me and assured me on multiple occasions that she would do what I wanted. Looking back, I had several examples of how that may not work out quite the way I wanted, but I didn't really see them for what they were at the time.

Regardless, I went forward and my flowers were very beautiful. However, unless I had given her a very specific example of exactly what I wanted (as with my bridal bouquet), she disregarded many of the things I said I wanted (or included things I specifically said I did not want). I'm not saying she's a bad florist (quite the contrary), but I am saying that I was led to believe she'd make what I asked her to make and on the whole, that didn't really happen. If anyone needs specific examples of that, you can PM me.

In addition, there are some recommendations I have related to how this business is run. First and foremost, there really isn't a contract with policies, etc. I was a VERY organized bride but leading up to the wedding, life gets incredibly chaotic and it's hard to keep track of things that were said (but not written down) 6+ months before. All of my other vendors gave me contracts with policies laid out so that things like final payment would be taken care of in proper time. For Flower Art, I had to contact them to ask (maybe 10 days before the wedding) when they were needing the final payment (no call, email, or anything from them asking for it anytime before) and the response was yes, they needed it and it was late and I needed to send a money order overnighted to them (no, I could not drop it off). This forced me to go to the bank and post office (neither of which were on my extensive list of errands 10 days out from my wedding). Did I owe the money? Yes. Did I want to be sure they had it prior to the wedding? Of course. Did they need to make me race around and jump through extra hoops of fire when they couldn't be bothered to contact me about it or give me a contract with terms like money order and date final payment is due? I don't think so and it was aggravating.

Finally, and these were really the straws that broke the camel's back for me and made me feel it was necessary I write a review. On the day of my wedding, there were 2 grievous errors. First, they showed up with too few cocktail table arrangements. Sure, this can happen, and their fix for that problem was to take flowers from other arrangements to make the 3 or whatever more, which is a reasonable solution. However, I did NOT hear about this happening from them. They never once contacted me (in 6 months from my wedding) to refund the $60-100 (total) on those arrangements or apologize for the mistake. To me, this is stealing. I paid X amount per cocktail table arrangement and if they showed up with fewer than we agreed upon (and that I paid for), then they have taken my money for doing nothing and that is wrong. There were also bathroom arrangements that we paid for that didn't get there. These items are all probably less than $400 altogether (and I paid over $3000), but I don't care if it's $5, it's still money we paid to get something that they did not provide. What really sends me over the edge is their lack of contact about it; mistakes happen, but when they do, you should admit it and do what you need to do to make it right.

The second major issue I had was that apparently certain flowers we agreed would be used must not have been available. This happens, of course. However, the choices of flowers they used instead were completely inappropriate. For example, they chose to substitute carnations instead of hydrangeas. I don't dislike carnations necessarily, but I did not agree to those in my centerpieces and I REALLY did not agree that they should be used in place of a significantly more expensive flower, like a hydrangea. Again, this was something that should have been discussed and put in writing in advance (and yes, I take partial responsibility for not thinking of doing that), but since it was not, she should have contacted me or my coordinator to approve the choices of substitutes, particularly when we're talking about such a significant value/price difference.

It concerns me that where financial matters were concerned, their business practices were questionable, and this was ultimately why I felt I had to leave a review. For all of the reasons given above, I cannot recommend Flower Art, despite how nice and talented they may be.

Cynthia did exactly what I had imagined for my wedding and more. She didn't add what she wanted, she got a detailed description of the flowers I liked and "plan B" flowers in case she couldn't find my first choice flowers. She is timely, exacting, and does EXTRAORDINARY work. I would hire her again in a heart beat!

Cynthia from Flower Art was great. My wedding was absolutely beautiful. I got tons of comments on the fantastic floral arangements.

The floral arrangements at our wedding were absolutely spectacular. I gave my general preferences to Cynthia--colors, types of flowers I liked, size and shape of arrangements and boquets, and she did the rest. She worked within our budget and the result was fabulous. She used two of the arrangements during the ceremony outside and then moved them inside for the reception to get the most out of our flowers and money. I would defnitely recommend Flower Art From Our Heart to other brides.