Party Posies Floral & Wedding Showroom

My experience with Party Posies was extremely positive. Rosana was our Day of Wedding Coordinator only so I can't say anything about their floral services. As our DOC, Rosana did an amazing job. She gave us a lot of helpful suggestions, advice, and direction. I felt confident that if I had any issues with my other vendors, she would be able to take care of it for me. She was very professional and organized at our wedding rehearsal. Most importantly, I was able to relax and enjoy every minute of my wedding since she took care of everything!! I have been in the bridal party for a few other weddings and Rosana did much more than I have seen other coordinators do. Thanks Rosana :)

I decided to add a listing for Party Posies in PW because I feel strongly about writing them a review for other brides who are considering using them. I have a very unpleasant experience with them which led me to decide to change my florist 1 month before my wedding. They acted extremely unprofessionally and didn't put customer to be their first priority. The major mistake that I did was to sign the contract with them at the end of our first consultation. First of all, Rosana sounded very professional, detail-oriented, and customer-friendly during our first meeting. She gave us a lot of examples of her services for other brides especially her day-of-coordinating service which we weren't interested on. At the end of our 2 hours meeting, she drafted up an estimate after finding out our budget. She was able to meet our budget, and on top of that gave us a $200 discount and also threw in day-of-coordinating service for free IF we book with her THAT DAY before leaving her office. We decided to book her since she seemed to be very professional during our meeting, but that was probably a "tactic" that she used to get her customers. Since our meeting with her, we had a lot of problems dealing with her, as listed here:

(1) She has typos all over contract which seemed very unprofessional.
(2) She also made many mistakes in first draft of contract (and keep in mind this is AFTER I decided to book with her at our first meeting). Some items didn’t match what I’ve requested but she claimed that I wanted what she wrote down, and therefore causing price increase when I asked for changes.
(3) take every little misunderstanding on the contract as an opportunity to increase price (happen more than once)
(4) Difficult to set up meeting time to go through details of the wedding day
(5) She has promised to make us mock-up pieces of the centerpiece as well as bridal bouquet at a bridal show which we attended only for that reason. She failed to make my bridal bouquet claiming that it wouldn’t last, and my centerpiece was NOT done in my color pallet.
(6) She claimed that she always make the flowers 2 days before the wedding, which made me doubt the freshness and the quality of her flowers. I checked with other florists and they always do it the day before the wedding!
(7) I have requested to send my dad to pick up personal flowers in her office the morning of my wedding. She REFUSED to be there 30 min earlier and would have to charge us extra if we want to pick up flowers 30 min early. And when I confronted her in a different conversation saying that she isn’t doing what a vendor should’ve done to ACCOMMODATE the customers, she lied and claimed that she has offered to deliver my personal flowers to me and I was still unhappy about her service. She has NEVER offered that in any previous conversation.
(8) Major error in final contract to be > $1000 over estimate and did not apologize for making such huge mistake.

I had a posting on a PW forum when I was going through this. Please check it out:
http://www.projectwedding.com/post/list/a-mess-dealing-with-my-florist-need-advice

I ended up breaking our contract and went with a different florist for my wedding since I was so disgusted by people at party posies. They are absolutely unprofessional and never try to accommodate their customers. However, what worth their 1 star is the fact that they did realize I was very unhappy with them and offered to return 50% of our initial deposit. The other 50% could be applied toward any future event and I ended up having them make some optional floral decorations that I originally didn’t want to spend money on for my wedding. Their work was acceptable for those items. However, based on my experience with them, I would highly recommend going elsewhere to give you a peace of mind.

Regarding Mark and Mary:

I was a bit surprised to see Mary’s post and how she so unabashedly
‘looked a gift horse in the mouth” in regards to her wedding Package.

I was approached by Rosanna to do a ‘package deal’ at the beginning of the economic
downturn of late, in an effort to ‘increase volume’. All of the vendors participating
were asked to reduce their regular rates (our normal rates which are commensurate with our level of service and experience) to the benefit of the client. This WAS an experiment,
which when a client booked ALL THREE services, they stood to save 25% per service.

My standard rates at the time, which were quite common in the industry, were 1200.00 for 4 hours and 200.00 each additional hour. It is not uncommon for a DJ who contributes as much to an event as I do, to command 1600.00-1800.00 per event. This is commonly less than 10% of the reception cost, and yet the DJ is responsible for 85% of the event’s Successful flow. It’s a bargain at my full rate, so I was a bit shocked when Mary found the overtime ‘excessive’. I hadn’t heard that from the last thousand events I had done, so I know it is not ordinarily an issue. How much is it per hour to retain the venue? Not to mention DJ ‘overtime’ is the only industry on the planet where overtime is DISCOUNTED
from the standard hourly rate. I obliged her by offering a nominal discount, after all, she had already received a substantial reduction. This was quickly becoming a classic case of “give an inch, get asked for a mile.”

By the day of the reception, after having set up an hour early, and beginning background music, suddenly I was informed of a meal change. Now please keep in mind, I’m an atypical DJ in that my goal is NOT to see how much banquet food I can eat, but the particular venue is renowned for their seafood, and I was asked if I wanted swordfish for dinner, which was abruptly switched that evening to the dreaded ‘vendor meal’ a club sandwich, which is not on my strict healthy regimen.

Also consider, there is almost always an overage of food ordered and paid for ‘in case’ which often goes uneaten, so I feel vendor meals are an unnecessary expense, and usually unappetizing. (I don’t eat mayo, bacon, or white bread).

I was also informed last minute that there would be no coordinator, which is usually fine, considering part of what a professional DJ does, is act as on site coordinator. It just seemed tacky to me, to insist on discount after discount, then negate in using one of the vendors, which was a condition of receiving the discount. I likened it to ‘buy on get one free, then attempting to return the free item and get money back. Other than that, the event went smoothly, everyone danced, and the event was a success. Since then I haven’t had any interest in ‘package deals’ and raised my rates to $2010.00 for 2010. For future reference I humbly submit that it makes more sense to seek out cheap vendors than squeeze high quality ones, for every dime. I never have situations like this with my full priced clients.