Flower power

Apparently it's tradition for something to go wrong at weddings.  It's almost considered a good luck charm in itself for everything not to run perfectly.  Whether you trip face-first into your cake, drop your wedding ring down a gutter or get left standing like a lemon at the altar, I am assured these are all good omens for a long and happy life together (perhaps barring that last one).

Thankfully something went wrong on our wedding day.  It was perhaps par for the course - trying to organise a wedding on another continent, with guests travelling from quite literally round the globe, it was probably odds-on that something wouldn't be perfect.

It was the flowers.

Now, as you know, I'm no Bridezilla, and actually we almost decided not to bother with flowers at all.  I just wanted something to do with my hands during the ceremony.  So after a certain amount of research, I chose the calla lily for my bridal bouquet.  In addition to being simple, it was also native to South Africa.  Score!  Lorna - best wedding planner ever - liaised with various florists in Port Elizabeth, and sent them the following photo, along with others just like it, to check they'd be happy to recreate the arrangement for the big day.

To cut a long story short, we were warned that, yes, whilst it was native to South Africa, it was actually out of season in March, so we wouldn't know for sure two weeks until the wedding whether they'd be able to get calla lilies.  This was disappointing, but not the end of the world, and I chose some back-up St Joseph's lilies in case the florist - Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth, weren't able to get them.

A week before the wedding we were told - yay - they could get calla lilies, but they would be "off white".  I asked what this meant, but again, they wouldn't know until they saw them.  I wasn't that bothered.  Any colour between white and yellow would be fine.  Petals Florist then said the flowers would be more expensive than the original quotation because they'd have to get them in from Johannesburg.  Fine.  We agreed to pay the extra.  They asked if we could pick them up on the Friday before the wedding - but as the wedding wasn't until the Saturday afternoon, we pushed back on this.  They eventually agreed we could pick them up on the Saturday morning.

Fast forward ahead one week and it's the day of the wedding!  Unbeknownst to me, Lorna had been called by Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth on the Friday and told she had to pick them up that day because they were renovating on the Saturday.  Reluctantly, she did so and put the flowers in a cool place in water, as she was instructed to do.

Basically by the time they arrived to me, the flowers were a disaster.  I was happy to go ahead with them initially - until I saw the faces of everyone I showed them to.  I'm not a proper girl, but my hairdresser's expression of shock and horror convinced me we couldn't use them.

The petals were curled and brown along the edges.  The flowers hadn't opened properly.  Worst of all, one of the buttonholes had a very large pen mark right down the centre of the blossom!  You can click on the photos to see them full size.  Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of the buttonholes, but you can imagine the quality.

We were really lucky that the lodge we held the wedding at - Hitgeheim - were amazing.  "We'll make a plan," said the owner, Archie, using his favourite expression.

Within an hour, and at no extra cost, they pulled together my bridal bouquet, using a native protea, which looked amazing (if that doesn't sound too smug).

So, disaster averted.  However, Lorna had paid for the terrible bouquet from Petals Florist.  So she wrote a nicely-worded email of complaint a few weeks after the wedding, enclosing the photographs as evidence of poor quality.

They didn't even do her the justice of replying.

So, Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth, South Africa - consider this your first online review.  Which will stay online, and - as I notice you don't yet have a website - will probably be the first hit on Google when anyone types in "Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth" or "Petals Florist Wedding Bouquet" or even possibly "Petals Florist".  Also - although you may not know what this is - I used to work in Search Engine Optimisation.  So by repeating Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth lots of times, and sneaking in phrases like "terrible quality", "rip off" and "appalling customer service", this page should get lots of hits.  As an extra service for free, I'm willing to throw in a monthly report for you - how many people have found this site by searching on "Petals Florist".  I'm nice like that.

So good luck with that.

By the way, Petals Florist in Port Elizabeth, I will take this review down any time you decide to refund Lorna for the very bad bridal bouquet and apologise for not replying to her earlier email. Your choice.