Florist News

hi,

i am organising a new wedding price list for my shop, and i was hoping for some help, basically, i was wondering if anyone offers a non refundable deposit to secure the wedding date? if there is a time limit if the wedding is cancelled on getting thier money back?
obviously if the wdding was cancelled the day before they have no chance of getting thier money back, but what if they cancelled say two weeks before, what would you do? would you refund the whole amount or a percentage?

any suggestions appreciated

If you enter into a contract to buy a house, you pay a deposit, usually 10%. If you decide to withdraw after this, you lose your deposit. That is what deposits are all about, otherwise, what is the point?
If you are going to spend hours in consultation & planning time, it is not unreasonable to expect to be compensated. There is also the possibility that you have declined another wedding for that date on the grounds that you were committed to this one, hence you lose again.
You should always take a deposit at the time of booking the date and you should explain in writing your terms & conditions which can be anything you like.
I usually ask for 20% of the estimated total value, even if the final figure cannot be calculated at that stage. You will not know if someone is just using you to compare prices or as a standby if something goes wrong with another florist. If you obtain a deposit, it tends to verify commitment on the client side.
Of course there may be cases where you decide to refund a deposit in full or in part. That is up to you and it could be related to goodwill or retaining a good customer. If you lose a customer due to witholding a deposit then you will potentially lose more than the deposit in the long run.

I did have a case where a bride cancelled due to a massive falling out, but 12 months later met someone else and married very quickly, so in that case it was the right thing to do. You need to look at each case individually, but always have a policy to fall back on.

Yes agree with fly2hi we always take a deposit and have this printed at the bottom of our wedding order when the bride books we ask for deposit and state this is non refundable and ask her to date and sign, although we had a bride cancel 3 weeks ago as partner of 12 years decided he didn't want to be wed had seen someone he thought he could be happier with and said he still hadn't made a move bride to be is a very good customer as is all of her family 5 in total coming in every week so we offered her £100 refund and rest as a credit note and have gained 3 regular customers since who also come in every week with an average spend of £40. Another bride cancelled at xmas for a sept. wedding she lived 60 mile from us and groom was in south of Ireland wedding was to be held in town as a halfway for all concerned and so neither parties had relatives in the area so they lost deposit I think every cancellation has to be judged on what have you to gain or lose.

We also always take a deposit when making a booking. I know a shop that also charges a fee for the actual consultation. It is deductable from the final order amount (if they book the wedding order) but they say it weeds out the time wasters and they generally do get high value weddings, but I wonder how many smaller ones they lose because they don't agreee with paying for a quote.

Our deposit is non-refundable because by the time they pay the deposit, you have done the initial quote and then revised it and spent a fair bit of time with letters, emails and the like. We also put in our terms the balance is to be paid two weeks before the wedding (about the time I order the flowers) We don't generally get many cancellations but of course I review each one accordingly. As the others have said I wouldn't lose a good customer over a deposit.

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Sarah Creating Bespoke Wedding Flowers Cheshire

Hi,
We take a £50 non refundable deposit. We explain that we only do one wedding per day,(we don't really)
One of my brides paid a £400 deposit a year before her wedding. She began using us as her regular florist and decided she would prefer us to arrange her wedding flowers.
To cut a long story short, they tried to get a refund,went to small claims court, the judge told them that they were lucky that the original florist didn't sue them for the total amount of their wedding flowers, that was their right.

My bride cancelled the order almost a year before their wedding day.

The only time I have given a refund was when one of my brides to be's mum passed away and the wedding was postponed.

I feel that if the bride has a consultation, it takes about 1/2 to 1 hour. If they pay a deposit and then decide to go elsewhere, the deposit covers the time you spent discussing her wedding.

If you call a plumber out, he will charge x amount just to walk through your door,why should our trade be any different.

Hope this helps

thanks for all the advice, we already do a non-refundable deposit to secure the wedding date, and we do free consultations anyway, i think i will just have to judge each one individually, i have only had one cancellation in all the time i have been here, and that was due to a bereavement, and it wasnt a large wedding anyway, we state that the flowers have to be paid in full one month before the wedding which i think is reasonable, thanks for all your advice