Benny & ViV

Benny & Viv delighted my friends on their big day,
With gorgeous flowers and a stunning bouquet,
Their arrangements were bloomin’ great,
Thoughtfully created, unique and ornate,
We give them 5 stars and a hip-​hip hooray!

I used Benny and Viv for my wedding. The process with dealing with them before the wedding was rather limited in contact since I was finishing up school in the States but on wedding day they were punctual with the flowers and the bouquets themselves were elegant and beautiful. The positives really end there. This is clearly a new company and it really shows. I will admit they know their flowers, but the business side leaves MUCH to be desired. We had instructions to, at the end of the reception, pack-​up the vases on each table and put them in the boxes which would be under each table at the reception and then return them the next day. (Which by the way they only told me about after I gave them the 25% deposit.) Sometime during the middle of the reception we finally had a chance to look under the table, and low and behold, there were no boxes. Cue standard wedding panic. We called both phone numbers they gave us and got no response but left messages. This really wasn’t that unexpected considering it was 10−11pm on a Saturday night. They had apparently told my someone who works at the reception hall but I only gave them her name and number for questions regarding the size of tables. Not once did I say she was their liaison to relay information to me. Luckily, we did find the boxes (they were under the hors d’oeurves table) but not once did we receive a call back the next day asking if everything was alright. Had we not have found those boxes there would be no way to pack up the vases we had strict instructions to return. No one had told us the boxes were in a different location, and believe me on your wedding day, small details like that can amplify stress by orders of magnitude. But the lack of concern by not returning our call the next day was really an unacceptable response. A quick, «Did you find them?» call would have been fine. A call back during the night would have been great, but even I don’t have expectations that high. Other brides, however, might not be as forgiving. Monday we tried again to contact them to see when we could return the vases. Again, no answer, left messages and we heard nothing. When we finally got a hold of them, on Tuesday, they claimed they were calling one of our contact numbers for the wedding all day on Monday. However, in the messages we left on Sunday we left the appropriate contact number as that wedding number was borrowed for transporting people for the wedding. Clearly they did not listen to our messages where we left the proper number for them to call.
While these seem like minor annoyances and average but not necessarily bad customer service, the real problems had just begun. As I mentioned we had strict instructions to pack the vases in the boxes and return them. That was heard loud and clear and other than the aforementioned problems we did what we were verbally told. Even though every other vendor we had, including our decorator, packed up and returned their own equipment, despite paying thousand of dollars for the flowers, we still did as they asked. Now picture my surprise when after we returned the vases, again as asked, they call us asking for 80 some odd candle holders. We were NEVER told about these. We had no idea we were responsible for these candles. We were told that the candles to be used would be from the convention center and would be setup by them. Not only were we not told to return the candles, the sheer fact that we were responsible for finding, packing and returning 80 candle holders is unbelievable. The vases we were going to let slide but now we have them harassing us for these candle holders that we were never told about. At the very least an itemized list with the items we needed to bring back after the wedding would be incredibly easy to make and would have negated this entire situation. But the fact that this is a business who’s motto seems to be «self service flowers for your wedding» and not tell you that up front. If they expect us to do the work in packing up their equipment maybe they can go out of their way to make sure we have everything at the end of a long night. They clearly want you to do work on your wedding day of all days and that seems to take a poor business model and make it even worse by not letting your customers know what the are required to do.
The flowers were nice, the customer service was terrible and their business plan is not wedding friendly. Perhaps they are cheaper than other flower vendors, and if that is what your are going for than you will get nice flowers for a price. But if you are not looking forward to doing menial labor with little to no clarification or the persistence of wedding stress after your wedding day I can’t recommend Benny and Viv for your wedding flowers.