When he brought the flowers in, my sister went to lift her bridal bouquet out of the box. I was in the other room getting ready when I heard several exclamations of shock coming from the room that she was in.
When she'd lifted the bouquet out of the box, it literally fell apart. Several roses, lilies, and pieces of ivy had just dropped to the floor. Our mother happened to have been taking pictures, and even got a picture of the flowers falling out and my sister's horrified expression.
So our mother gets on the phone and calls the florist. My sister is freaking out as even more flowers fall out of the bouquet. The florist gets snotty and tells my mother "Well, it wasn't falling apart when it was here".
Mom tells them "it's falling apart now. What are you going to do about it?"
The florist wants us to bring the bouquet back so they can re-assemble it. They can't send a new bouquet because they don't have any more of those specific flowers. The thing is, we don't have time to go out to the florist and come back and be back in time for the pre-wedding pictures, as the photographer had arrived.
Mom spends several minutes arguing with the florist, when my sister says "tell them if they don't send someone out here RIGHT NOW, I'm calling the better business bureau. I also want my money back."
Magic words, were those. Suddenly they can spare a florist to come out to where we are and fix the wreck of a bouquet.
15 minutes later, a rather sullen florist is at the door of the venue. She demands to know where the bouquet is. I tell her it's upstairs, and she tells me that it needs to be brought down so she can work on it in the van.
I bring the bouquet down, and she spends several minutes fixing it. The other bridesmaid goes outside to get it, and the florist snaps at her and tells her that the plastic cone that holds the flowers in place had been cracked all the way through, which happens when a bouquet gets dropped. Then says "It was not dropped at our store."
The bridesmaid tells her that no one here dropped it, either. The flowers went straight from the store, to the car, and then to the house. Plus, if the bouquet had been dropped hard enough to break the plastic cone, it would have damaged some of the flowers, right? The flowers looked fine.
The florist leaves, we get the bouquet back to my sister, and as we're having our pictures taken, two roses and a piece of ivy fall out.
We managed to shove them back inside the bouquet, but for the rest of the pictures little bits of ivy kept dropping out of it and one of the roses just wouldn't stay in. By the time she was ready to walk down the aisle, most of the ivy had fallen out of the bouquet. Thankfully nothing else actually came out while she was walking down the aisle.
She'll be writing a letter to the owner, and will be including the picture that our Mom got of the falling apart bouquet. If anyone here is in KY, stay away from Nanz and Kraft. Their florists obviously aren't very good at their jobs.
mini update:
I was telling my boss about the experience, and she said that they used to have an account at that particular florist, and used them to send arrangements to employees when a baby had been born or a family member had died. Apparently they cancelled the account about a year ago because arrangements kept arriving with dying or wilted flowers, or, like my sister's bouquet, fell apart when handled. Yikes. I want to know how they've managed to stay in business if they provide such shoddy service.