Remember how I was super excited about the florist I met in Pittsburgh? And how all that was left was to dot the i's and cross the t's before she would officially be the person to bring my roses-and-dahlias-and-jewel-tones bouquet ideas to life?
Rich colors! Lots of petals! Waaaaaaant!
That was before the final proposal came in at $200 over budget. I asked if there was anything we could do to bring the price down, but she said our only options were to either start from scratch on the plan for the bridesmaids' bouquets and drastically change their overall look, or to start eliminating things entirely from the proposal. Given that the only things we asked for in the first place were bouquets, boutonnieres, and corsages, and no one who was originally listed to receive flowers wants to forgo them, there's nothing we can cut.
I know $200 over budget doesn't sound like that much, but when we were only planning to spend $700 in the first place, it's a pretty big jump above where we hoped to be. I'm very tempted to say, "oh, what's another $200, it's just a drop in the bucket!", but I also worry that it's easy to drop an extra one, two, three hundred dollars here and there and suddenly be thousands of dollars over the budget you had originally planned for.
So as far as I can tell, I have three options: suck it up and pay the extra money, start over on the bouquet plan, or (sigh) start from scratch and find a new florist altogether.
What would you do?
Wow - those bouquets are fantastic! I don't know what I'd do. $200 IS a lot of money. The first thing I'd probably do is a consult with another florist. Tell them EXACTLY what you want and what you have to spend (which I'm sure you did in the first place) and see if they can work with you.
ReplyDeleteIf the new one is still over budget then I'd choose the one whoever you clicked the most with and try my hardest to get the on budget.
Good luck!!!
Alicia, I think you're right. I'm calling around to a few other people to have more consultations. Part of the problem is I don't know if my budget and expectations are totally unrealistic, you know?? Hopefully, I'll have a better idea after I talk to a few more people.
ReplyDelete