Florist #1 - no thanks!

For Natalie's wedding, she used a florist that worked out of her home, but Natalie couldn't remember her name, only where the location was, so I looked in the phone book, found this lady, and called her. She worked in the same area, and I found out that she works out of her home! I asked her if she was my sisters florist, and she asked for the last name, then told me that she didn't have her records with her, but that it was probably her! So, I made an appointment to meet with her.

I called Natalie, excited about the meeting, then found out it wasn't her, but another place. But since I had made the appointment already, I figured, why not?

My best friend, Betsy, who I've added as one of my bridesmaids, along with my sisters, joined me last night as I met with my first florist.

First Impressions:
70's or 80's style decor, fake flowers, dust, mixed with the stench of stale smoke... I should have walked back to the car, but I felt bad, didn't want to be rude, so I figured I'd see what she had to offer!

The meeting:
I had pictures, ideas, flowers, and numbers of how many of everything that I would need for the wedding.

She had a screen saver on her computer and another TV, behind me, playing with a variety of pictures of flowers that she had done at weddings. Half the pictures were out of focus, and the other half were of the entire room, with the ONE SMALL flower arrangement in the picture that we could barely see.

At one point, I told her about these really cute yellow Billy Button flowers and how I thought they were cute, when she then proceeded to tell me about this OTHER flower that was similar to the cute fully round billy buttons that I liked, that she called Kermit-something-or-other and was green, then pointed at one of the pictures on her TV, behind me to tell me that was the flower in the picture, which looked nothing like the billy button and more like a small YELLOW-ISH mum! I told her that it looked yellow, and she said that it may look yellow, but really it was green... um... thanks for the information, but that's not what I want. Which I should have told her at the beginning, had I known she was going to bring up that Kermit flower about 3 more times, before I finally told her that I didn't want that one, because if it's supposed to be green, but looks yellow in the pictures, then I don't want to risk the look of my bouquet. (And yes, she even brought it up one more time in the conversation!)

At this point, I really just wanted to stand up, gather my things, and tell her that what I want for my wedding does not coincide with what SHE wants for my wedding and leave. But I didn't want to hurt her feelings, and I couldn't figure out a way to tell her that in a nice way. So, I stayed.

Then I showed her a cute picture of a bouquet that I wanted and she proceeded to tell me that she thinks that I should have a bouquet of roses... I told her that I didn't want a bouquet of roses and that I wanted the one in the picture, with only a few roses, for sentimental reasons, since my Grandma had them in her bouquet. She then proceeded to tell me that when she orders roses, that she has to order them in groups of 25, and that if I wanted to stay within my $500 budget (my budget is a bit higher than that, but I wanted to think low, just in case) then she thought it would be best if I have a bouquet of roses! BUT I DON'T WANT a bouquet of roses! I thought it would help, if I gave her a random reason why I didn't want them, by telling her that unless they were freshly grown in some one's back yard, the smell of roses, reminds me of funerals and I didn't want to smell that on my wedding day! Unfortunately, it didn't help, so finally, I said, "Okay, well, let's go with your idea of roses, then!"

At this point, Betsy was thoroughly bored looking! Lounging in the chair, messing with her phone, then just as she put her phone back on the desk, my phone started vibrating, and I knew that Betsy had sent me a text to tell me that we needed to get the heck out of there! I almost started laughing, but tried to finish our meeting gracefully.

Back to the flowers, I was asking questions, and trying to get the information that would be necessary, if I were desperate enough to go with this florist when the florist told me, "Look, I need to take control of the conversation now!" What? Another missed opportunity for me to get out of there! So she then started telling me prices... And you know what? The prices she gave me for the amounts of everything that I needed added up to almost exactly $500!

Sorry, but she's not getting a penny from me! Actually, I'm NOT sorry! And I should ask for a refund for the wasted 20-30 minutes of my life, that was only worth wasting for this story!

Betsy was pretty entertaining throughout the entire meeting too, helpfully going along with the florists ideas saying "So true" from the movie 27 dresses, then as we were leaving, she was telling the florist, "no roses, Francie doesn't like red roses, no roses!" In a very dramatic concerning voice.

We barely made it to the car straight-faced!