Secret Garden Florist & Gift Shop — Local services in Town of Montgomery

This review has been a long time in the making -- because of my studies and because I get too upset to even put my frustrations and heartache into words.

I ordered my wedding flowers through Bonnie, the owner of Secret Garden Florist. She seemed super great and spent a lot of time with us when we were first browsing florists. The moment we signed on with her though, we felt bullied throughout the remainder of the process. There was a lot of "miscommunications" where Bonnie would say something and then claim she never said it later on. She would ultimately "give in" to what she said first and follow up with phrases like "my beautiful Amanda," which felt incredibly insincere and dismissive.

The day of the wedding, there were so many mistakes -- both based on written and verbal agreement. I brought these up to Bonnie after the wedding. I simply told her of my concerns and frustrations and she immediately said she's sending my concerns to her lawyer in case I decided to defame her character. Nothing I ever said was a lie and there was simply no need to do that when I was expressing frustrations. I am convinced this is yet another bullying tactic.

To every concern I brought up, and by this point I only switched to focusing on clear blatant errors in the written contract, Bonnie would never address/admit the errors. She would respond with phrases like "I'm sorry you felt that way, but it was beautiful." I don't care if she felt they were beautiful, the fact is they were not what was agreed upon and we were not delivered what we paid for. She sent me a small check ($68) for something I guess she felt was worthy of a refund. However, this check was for something so minor that didn't even begin to cover the contractual errors. When I expressed frustrations with this as well, she said no other refund was warranted and never responded further.

There were so many errors to the point where I considered taking the business to small claims. However, because I live 10 hours away and am in school, this would not be a realistic, feasible, or wise use of my time. I would be very cautious in booking Secret Garden Florists for any weddings based on my negative experience. No one wants to experience sadness on their wedding, but my arrangements were a huge point of disappointment. No one should receive a follow up to their concerns, as they are just starting out in marriage, leaving them felt dismissed and defensive. Yet that is how I was left feeling.

I know this business is active about responding, but at this point it doesn't matter how they wish to address this. I have the written contract to prove all of the errors. I have the emails and texts to show the dismissive and passive aggressive attitude I received. Nothing I am saying is a lie or "defamation of character." Nothing they can say will fix the way I felt on my wedding day and the way I felt during the beginning of my marriage. EDIT: Bonnie did not give me 100% of her time; she promised to be at the wedding to set up and was never there Contractual Errors: Missing type of flowers "astillbe" from bridal bouquet, total bouquet price: $169.99... she will claim I told her to remove them from email conversation, however at the end of the email conversation, I told her to keep them and they were never removed from the contract. Groomsmen had same boutonniere as the two best people. We had 6 groomsmen plus two best people. This was the most upsetting because the two maids of honor stood out by the design on their dress, the best people were supposed to stand out with their boutonniere, and they ended up without a way to stand out. Regular groomsmen price: $10 x 6 = $60, best people price: $12.50 x 2 = $25 Ceremony pergola fabric had large gaudy bows added on the sides when the contract stated for it to flow down each side instead, the top portion was supposed to drape and instead it clung to the metal bars, total pergola design price: $325 wrong crystals in our short centerpieces, total centerpiece design price: 13 x...

This florist is the absolute epitome of horrible service. I had someone place a simple order of one orchid plant along with two balloons to be gift wrapped on Friday, October 1, 2021. I was told it would be ready on Saturday, October 2, 2021 between 9am to noon. I arrived promptly between the prescribed interval and I was 'greeted' by an officious employee (I believe she is the proprietor) who couldn't even get the last name of the order correctly. After that inauspicious introduction, it became patently obvious that the order wasn't even ready yet. I received no apology and was brusquely handed the orchid plant sans balloons or even gift wrap. When I pointed this out and patiently explained at least twice that the order was placed by an intermediary (not that it should matter at this point) she haphazardly wrapped the two balloons and rather abruptly asked me "Do you need it gift wrapped, because most people want it gift wrapped?" I lost all hope in ever frequenting this pathetic excuse for a business and left without having it gift wrapped. Were it not for the presence of a small child in the vicinity I would have certainly expressed my distain for her complete lack of rudimentary customer service. She made absolutely no apology for her blatant negligence and gave me a rather nasty glare in lieu of "Have...

I was trying to give the owner Bonnie a chance to respond to my concerns about my bridal bouquet, but she has yet to respond , she reads my concerns twice and doesn’t even care that she messed up on my bouquet. I texted Bonnie on Facebook for a custom bouquet for my wedding , I told her exactly what I wanted and she confirmed it back to me on what I wanted. When I picked up the bouquet the colors were nice but I didn’t see the whole thing until my wedding day and took it out of the water , the color of the ribbon was not what I wanted, it was the complete opposite color that didn’t even match my husband like it was supposed to. Meanwhile she specifically asked what color I wanted. Also there were two pins sticking up and it ended up poking me which could of been worse since my 1 year old was holding the flowers. The flowers were very limp and came out of the bouquet very easily. The picture I showed her doesn’t even come close to what she gave me. Clearly she doesn’t care about people and their needs. There were a lot of random leaves that shouldn’t had been there which looked like flowers that were never pruned , I paid over $100 for a bouquet that looked like a bouquet right out of Walmart just wrapped with a...