This is a non sponsored review of companies The Faux Flower Company, and Ashdown and Bee who we had hired for our wedding. All opinions stated are my own, and reflect the experience, and quality of the services provided.
The Booking
We first got into contact with the Faux Flower Company on the 12th of November 2017 to do the flowers for the wedding arch, and table runners. We had seen their work at the Long Reef Golf Club wedding open days, and loved the look! I had been talking to Samantha who owns the Faux Flower Company, and she had always been a pleasure to talk to throughout the entire experience. Samantha was very accomodating for my many emails, and extremely helpful.
Why we chose fake flowers for certain parts of the wedding?
The bouquets, buttonhole flowers, and table centrepieces for the guests were all real flowers because we wanted our guests to be able to take them home! The centrepieces were actually made of succulents, and real moss on a real tree stump by The Plant Place so they could be planted in your garden. You can read all about it here!
For the bridal table, and arch we chose to have faux flowers because we didn't want the arch flowers to droop from the sun/heat, nor would we be able to bring the bridal table flowers home due to the sheer size we wanted. We didn't opt to get any flowers preserved as that's just not our thing to have potpourri.
The Quote, and Inspiration
I of course made a Pinterest board full of my ideas for the wedding, and Samantha was able to help create something that was affordable, and matched my descriptive changes needed from the Pinterest Inspo. In the end we settled for one large overhanging floral arrangement above the bridal table, one long floral table runner for the bridal table, and the draping, plus foliage for the wedding arch. This brought us to the affordable sum of $870AUD including GST.
The Custom Polaroid Photo booth
On September 2nd 2018, so 13 days before the wedding, Samantha emailed me confirming all the details for our wedding, and asking if we wanted to have a Photo Booth made using the vendor Ashdown And Bee. We said yes as it was a $200 bond plus $200 for the sign plus love seat with matching flowers, and $60 for the custom messaging. The message we wanted was:
Main text: Mr & Mrs Averion
subtext: #berbonbythebeach
The Results
Faux Flower Company did an amazing day! The foliage on everything was so dreamy, and exactly the romantic fairytale look we wanted. Not a single complaint about any of the items.
However we were annoyed that Ashdown And Bee made a typo on our sign and made the hashtag #berbonbythesea. This was made aware to us by one of my bridesmaids who had to track down a permanent marker to write over the sign. Thankfully it looked okay! Edit: After posting this review, I was contacted by both vendors stating that the error was actually Faux Flower Company's as they had provided the incorrect hashtag to Ashdown And Bee.
Pictured: not the hashtag we paid $460 on a sign for
While I would recommend Faux flower Company to anyone having a wedding in Sydney due to the beautiful flowers but on that note was disappointed that they would provide the wrong hashtag that we paid $60 to have hand written on a sign that every guest took photos with. While the fault wasn't Ashdown And Bee's, I definitely didn't appreciate being bombarded with messages by them at night outside of business hours. I waited for messages from both parties to state their case to find the bottom of this error that ultimately was $460 (as already stated, $200 bond, $200 hire, $60 custom sign). This post wedding interaction made an annoying situation with an even more sour taste.
I still think you'd be better off hiring, or making a frame, and making your own cardboard/wooden sign to write your tags on. While it definitely didn't damper our euphoria, you don't pay $460 to then use permanent marker over it!
Pictured: The hashtag that we had to use permanent marker lol
I hope this helps all you brides to be x