Wedding Journal: June
Now that I
had THE DRESS, I was ready to look at florists. Somehow I felt this should be the
next big item we checked off. As with everything else, the research began. The
main resources I used for this present task were Modern Bride's Boston edition magazine
and the Boston Magazine's Elegant Wedding edition. Both of these magazines are great
resources for local vendors and I highly recommend them. Four florists made their
way onto my list: J. Wrobel in West Newbury,
Fleurish in Cambridge, The Celebrated Flower in Somerville, and K Lashay in Cambridge. It was the week of June 7th
and I called all of the florists. I scheduled appointments with Jessica Wrobel on
Saturday, June 12th and Mark at the Celebrated Flower for Tuesday, June 22nd. Both
florists had experience designing for both our church and reception site which was on of
my criteria. Neither Fleurish or K Lashay called me back - oh well their lost
business. I can understand that these florists are busy, that June is their busiest
month, but to not even return a phone call is rude. I did call one other florist in
Wakefield (whose name escapes me now) and he said to call back after July - he was too
busy to even speak to me. Oh well - more lost business for him!
Florist #1 - Jessica Wrobel: Saturday morning is brutally hot. Not good considering we have a soccer game at 3:20 this afternoon. After doing some work around the house we get ready to drive to Jessica's. She works out of her home studio and West Newbury is about 45 minutes north of Boston. Our appointment is at 1:00. We drive up in my beautiful new car, the Passat (which alas is still not registered so is currently not on the road - long depressing story). Jessica's house is really out in the woods and on top of hill - a very beautiful setting. We meet with her and her beautiful black lab :-) She made a comment that it was good to see the groom along, or something like that and I guess I never thought of Michael not coming along. It's his wedding too - shouldn't he have input on the flowers as well as they will be the majority of the decorations? I guess some guys aren't interested though and I just lucked out :-) First we look through her portfolio and then we talk about what flowers we might want, what style of bouquets, table arrangements, etc. Neither Michael or I had any concrete ideas, and as I am not a very visual person, she was great at helping us come up with some really unique and creative ideas. She went through some flower books with us, showing us different types of flowers in the colors we liked, telling us which were in season, etc. Of course I am not going to disclose too many ideas here...but you will all see soon enough. We ended up staying with her until 2:45 which meant we really had to fly down to Reading where our soccer game was. On the way, we talked about our meeting and realized we had the same impression - we were very impressed by her, liked her enthusiasm, creativity and that she would go the extra steps to totally individualize the wedding. Unfortunately we lost our soccer game badly and I was out after about 1 minute of play with two badly pulled quads - the luck!
Florist #2: The Celebrated Flower: I have to admit that I picked this florist because I liked the name of the company. Turned out not to be a bad way to pick because we were very impressed by Mark as well. His designs were a bit more on the outlandish side and some were in VERY BRIGHT colors which really appealed to Michael. He showed us a few albums of his work, all of which was beautiful. He really wanted to know what we wanted and I kept trying to tell him we didn't really know and kind of needed direction. He said he could do whatever we want. For some people this would be perfect - a very flexible accommodating designer - but I knew I needed someone who could really come up with some unique ideas and would be willing to work to help implement them. I have to say I loved looking at his portfolios - he had worked at some beautiful reception sites - my favorite was the Gamble Mansion, which we had considered as well.
Even though we were leaning towards Jessica, we did wait and compare their quotes. His was higher than hers on some, lower on others, and overall about the same so we went with Jessica and so far are very very happy with our decision! I actually met another Boston bride who is having her reception at the Hyatt and using Jessica as a florist - great minds I guess :-)
