Hello All,

This is a really interesting subject, we hate it when our brides chose to go elsewhere, anyone who works from home is a complete amateur and deserves to fail and, as for the staff, we chain them to a tap in the corner, beat them regularly and then they go and betray us by setting up their own businesses....how dare they???!!!!!

I love this site, it's wonderful to be able to have a rant!!! Here goes.

Wedding deposits.

Anyone who is stupid enough to charge a customer £20 deposit deserves to lose the business. When a client comes to you they need to know that you are a comitted professional. £20 doesn't cut it!! When a bride books a venue, caterer, photographer etc, they have to pay sizeable deposits, so why not to us.....we charge 50%!!!! We have a consultation, at which we tell the client about the deposit. We do the quote and when the client is happy we take the money; it shows that we are comitted to them and they to us. They'll think twice about going elsewhere once they've parted with hundreds of pounds!!!

Working from Home.

We wouldn't have our business if we hadn't started working from home. We started in a garage until we could afford a studio. We made the most of what we had until we could take the next step. We used our mobiles, arranged consultations in smart venues and made our website our shop window. We were all beginners once with the belief that we deserved a chance....don't knock it

Staff

A large part of my training involved work experience, I loved and hated it. I got the experience I needed, but I was treated like a servant. On the 13th of February 1991 I was relogated to a garage full of flowers with a tap in one corner and told to get conditioning!!! I worked my socks off as well as the skin on my hands where my scissors rubbed!

However.......I have had to work with trainees who never had a hope in hells chance of EVER being florists, including one who refused to sweep the floor because she was doing NVQ level 3 and that wasn't what she was learning to do!!!! Taking on anyone is never easy, but you can lessen the pain by taking precautions. Make them work a trial day, get them to do test pieces and treat them with respect, not like a doormat. The old addage "you pay peanuts, you get monkeys" may not be fashionable but it does ring true.