Picking a florist?

We've been to see quite a few florists in the last week or two.
We've seen in alphabetical order :

Bunny's Florist
B*urtons
Distinctive Florists
Flowers By Brian
Hidden Essence
Pedestals
Weddings By Flower Michele, Carle Place

We've narrowed it down to either Flowers by Brian or Flower Michele. However we've read a few conflicting reviews on both of these, especially with Flower Michele which seems to have been during a change of management or location possibly?

Just wondering if anyone else has booked with either of the above or recently had a wedding and what the experience was with them?

Any info would be great!

Thanks!

I went to 2 on your list Distinctive Floral & Hidden Essence and 1 that is not.

Distinctive Floral & Hidden Essence were giving me the same quantity and flowers with Hidden Essence being over $900 less expensive.

I think either one would do a fantastic job, but Michelle just sold me with her service.

We used flowers by brian and we couldn't have been happier with everything. the bouquets were big and bautiful and the centerpieces were exactly what I wanted.

The delivery guy even fixed my cake because there was a crack in it and coulnd't leave it the way it was and spent a good 45 minutes making it perfect!

Let me know if you have any q's.

i was also torn between both flowers by brian and flower michele.
i think flower michele wouldve come down in price and definitely would have been quality work - however, i also heard about the changes there and didnt entirely feel comfortable. i also think that joe at fbb got my vision more.
i have two friends - one used michele and one used brian - both were extremely happy and had amazing flowers. i think you'll be great with either place.

Thanks for the new suggestions and also thoughts on the michele situation/brian stuff too! Its a hard decision.

We're going to check out vendor recs by our venue as well and see how that goes.



Everyone is shocked that we haven't booked big vendors yet and luckily they're still available for our date!!!
Talk about crunch time!

Update: We ended up not using any of the above florists and went with one of our vendor's recommended florists who gave us the best deal for what we wanted and we really liked them a lot.

For those who asked about pedestals, they weren't our most expensive vendor that we visited, but we didn't feel comfortable with their vision of what WE wanted, or the price. It was toward the bottom of the list when comparison shopping. It was an instant NO as we left the shop.

Recommendation though we didn't go with her, Bella Flowers, she was our second choice. Middle of the road reasonable price and she has great style. Visited her on the whim and really threw a wrench in our plans as we had thought we were settled with florists. In the end we went with our original first choice however as we felt more comfortable with them, nothing against Bella though, since they looked like they'd be great too.

Flower Michele - Rich was great, but because of past reviews and the uncertainty with the management situation we didn't want to risk it this close to the wedding. We want as little worry as possible at this point.

Flowers by Brian, great vision with flowers, but more expensive for the same thing and didn't have exactly what we wanted with regards to hardware and such.