Anthony Gowder Designs

We hired this company for our daughters wedding about two months before the actual wedding. We live in Florida and did everything with them via email and over the phone. I was in communications with Cassandra who was very good. There was couple of misunderstandings but I guess that was normal because of not being able to meet face to face. Flowers were delivered on time, and all of the personals were just simply amazing. My daughters bouquet was exactly like she wanted! We had a small issue with the flowers for the fireplace, but that was promptly communicated to the owner, and he personally came over in less than 30 min and had everything fixed. The whole thing turned out amazing! Just beautiful!

I can not say enough about Anthony Gowder Designs. I have worked with the owners for years and of course decided to use them for my own wedding. Stephanie took the time to listen to what I wanted and provided the most gorgeous flowers for my day! My bouquet was stunning.
If you want to use a vendor you can trust… use Anthony Gowder Designs. They are incredible!

Anthony Gowder Designs was amazing. Not only was our décor to die for but Stephanie Gowder, our day of coordinator was our lifesaver. We got married on June 20^th, 2015 at the W Lakeshore. Our ceremony was in the great rooms, which is another word for conference room :) Stephanie and her team completely transformed that room. There were candles and flowers and draping. The room looked incredible and really set a romantic tone! Which was quite an amazing feat considering the way that room looked without any of that! Our reception room has an amazing view of the city and lake. To enhance that Stephanie suggested using tall floating candles and some flower satellites around them. It was exactly what we were looking for, simple and won’t take away from the view. We were so pleasantly surprised when we walked into the reception and it was even more gorgeous than we thought! Besides décor, Anthony Gowder does day of coordination services as well, we knew we definitely wanted this from the beginning. It was so nice to have everything be a one stop shop! Stephanie was our lifesaver from the day we hired her all the way through the wedding day. She contacted all my vendors, set up times for everything, and made an amazing day of timeline. I didn’t have to lift a finger. The day of our wedding went so smooth and I know it was because of Stephanie. Our whole family and bridal party loved her, she was so sweet and incredibly organized! We really found a fantastic company when we found Anthony Gowder Designs. If you want quality and professionalism all the way, then you should definitely hire them!

I had a very positive experience working with Cassandra Vack from Anthony Gowder. First of all, she was respectful of my budget. Sometimes there are vendors who don’t want to work with you if you don’t spend a certain amount, or some who only treat you nice if you are spending a lot, but Cassandra is NOT like that. I felt valued as a client from day one, and she never proposed anything that was too expensive for me.
Cassandra was also really flexible and responsive. I revised my order at least five times, and each time she was patient and answered emails within 24 hours. On the day of the wedding, the flowers looked fresh and beautiful. The bridesmaid bouquets complimented the girls’ dresses really well and helped make our ceremony look really elegant and romantic.
If you look at their pictures, Anthony Gowder usually does more modern-​looking designs, but my wedding was more rustic looking and they worked to fit my look. I think they do just as well with simple, rustic weddings as they do with ritzy hotel ones.
The last thing I appreciated was that they did a free floral showing where they show you samples of how your flowers will look on your wedding day. Some florists make you pay for a showing so make sure you ask about that, because Anthony Gowder doesn’t! Overall, going with Anthony Gowder was one of the best decisions I made because they made me feel like I didn’t have to worry about the decorations on the day of my wedding!

I worked with Cassandra Vack at Anthony Gowder for the Décor and Flower arrangements at my April 2015 Wedding Ceremony & Reception at Café Brauer in Chicago.
My husband and I are «workaholics» so we needed to be able to communicate our vision without having to spend too much time on it or micromanaging the process.
We had a blank canvas to work with at Brauer for the ceremony and Cassandra did a great job working with our vision and enhancing it.
No doubt Anthony Gowder is known for their exquisite, elegant designs of a variety of spaces. But, we just wanted a more natural, rustic look from the entry way, isle and alter to the centerpieces and bouquets. Cassandra and her team did a wonderful job of executing this «rustic» vision but then also put some great touches on it to make it very elegant.
I’m one of those brides who previously thought flowers and décor don’t matter at a wedding and that nobody notices them. But, the biggest compliments we received was about the décor, particularly for the ceremony. I would highly recommend Cassandra Vack and the Anthony Gowder team for any wedding or event where you want a stand-​out, unique style, without all the extra work or worry.

I reached out to three different florists when I began my search. One was within budget but very underwhelming, another was incredibly rude and shamed my budget, and then there was Cassandra at Anthony Gowder Designs.
Even though they do all sizes of events and planning (and you can tell from their website and their offices/​studio that they do some big events), I never felt like my 115 person reception or my budget were too small. I sat down with Cassandra for a consultation and showed her ideas that I liked. She took notes and threw out some additional ideas about flowers that would be in season (and therefore more affordable) that would still have the look I wanted, etc. They have a ton of votive, vase and candelabra options. These really put a finishing touch on the design.
We did a showing in March (which was early for an October wedding, but my mom was in town visiting, so they accommodated us with no problem), which was so helpful. I realized that I liked the direction we were going in, but something was missing or a little off. Just like that, Cassandra moved a few things around and switched out the candelabras and there was my centerpiece.
On the day of our reception, everything was beautiful and exactly as we (well, I — my now-​husband wasn’t too concerned with the flowers) had hoped it would look.
Working with Cassandra and AGD was so easy and pleasant. I would work with them again in a heartbeat.
In full disclosure, I went over my budget, but I got exactly what I wanted with my centerpieces and they looked beautiful. (Five days later, the flowers are still alive and looking good.)

I highly recommend Anthony Gowder for Chicago area brides. Here’s the low-​down:
The woman who I initially worked with, Greta, very suddenly left the company while we were in the middle of developing my proposal. There were some hiccups with the transition from this unforeseen circumstance, but everything turned out great in the end. Stephanie Gowder stepped in and took over my account, and I worked with her on everything for my wedding, which included centerpieces, flowers for the cocktail hour, lighting, a special cloth backdrop for the ceremony, and a chuppah. I had a vision of a sort of 1930s-​style ambiance for the reception, and I asked if Anthony Gowder himself could join us for a meeting, because I knew his reputation as a great designer. And so he met with us, which was great. He had fantastic ideas! At the wedding, the flowers looked even better than I could have expected. I was especially pleased with the chuppah. I had wanted a simple, wooden chuppah rather than the thicker, cloth ones that seem to be in style, and so they made one for me from scratch!
It’s true that this company is expensive, but in this particular case, I think you get what you pay for, and there are ways to keep costs down, such as selecting less expensive flowers and keeping your bouquets and centerpieces smaller. They would certainly be willing to help you with that, and there were several points during the planning process that they offered price comparisons between different options. My brother is getting married in the fall, and I recommended Gowder to him and my future sister-​in-​law. They had their first meeting with them last week, and they said that Cassandra was great!

Cassandra made our whole planning experience amazing!!! She was the absolute perfect fit for us. She was patient, flexible, understanding, insightful and a blast to work with! She took our vision and made it reality and when we walked into our wedding reception we just could not get over how gorgeous it all was. We were complimented on every single detail and without Cassandra, I don’t think we would have achieved that look. The floral was gorgeous, the linens were perfect and our coordinator was someone we wanted to stay and celebrate with because she was that awesome. Thank you Gowder for such an amazing experience and thank you Cassandra because our day would not have been the same without you!!!
I want to comment on some of the reviews on pricing as well. We did walk out of Gowder after our first appointment thinking we were going to be a little over budget but not too much and when we received our first estimate we nearly had heart failure-​BUT Cassandra quickly worked with us to revise our designs to be more budget friendly and in the end it all worked out perfectly. She has no issues making revisions to our proposal multiple times. She was flexible to work with and didn’t make us feel less than worthy of their services because we didn’t want to spend as much as some people may in downtown Chicago.
They start off big and give you your ultimate dream wedding proposal and you get to see everything in an itemized list so if you do have heart failure over the cost, you can pick and choose what you need to get rid of to stay on track. They were just very easy to work with.

I am so thrilled to have worked with Cassandra and Stephanie from Anthony Gowder Designs for our wedding. From the first moment we met, they understood exactly the atmosphere we wanted to create with the floral arrangements and bouquets. I also hired Cassandra to be our Day of Coordinator and I cannot say enough great things: she is energetic, organized, upbeat, fun to be around and extremely detail oriented. I always felt like I had her full attention and she wanted our wedding day to be as beautiful as we did. Every arrangement was meticulously executed and of the highest quality. We received many, many compliments on the bridesmaids bouquets as well. I can’t imagine my wedding without Cassandra behind the scenes, orchestrating it all! What a magical night! Thank you!

They were amazing! Our wedding was a few weeks ago and everything turned out better than expected. They took my ideas and created something beautiful. Suzanne let me know what would work and what wouldn’t. She was informative, inventive, and accessible. Our center pieces were to die for. The boutonnières and bouquets were exquisite. The only snag was for my bouquet. They could not get a hold of a particular flower I requested. I was presented with two other options and the one turned out to be just as pretty. I highly recommend.

Anthony Gowder handled the flowers and lighting for my wedding back in 2009. We had some bucket lighting placed around the venue (Prairie Productions) and one fancy patterned light shining down on the dance floor, 12 tables with pretty large centerpieces, bridesmaid bouquets, my bouquet, and all the boutinierres for the men and corsages for moms/​close family. This cost about $ 7k. I used orchids in my centerpieces and my bouquet, hence part of the hefty pricetag. But aside from the initial consultation, I felt pretty much ignored during the process leading up to the wedding. It was hard to get emails/​calls back in a timely fashion. None of this would have bothered me, except for the fact that when I walked into my beautiful reception space, something seemed off. It was right then that I realized they had forgotten to include the cool hanging moss on all of my centerpieces, which although some might think hideous, I really wanted… and paid for. I shook it off because what could really be done at that point with only a couple hours left before the guests were arriving. The flowers were still beautiful, just not my dream wedding vision, and I don’t plan on doing this more than once so I was more than a little disappointed. I mean, maybe $ 7k is the lower end of stuff they do, but it’s a lot of money for someone like me and I was expecting perfection or damn near to it! Most disappointing though, was that when I contacted them after the fact to tell them about the error, they were just like «oh, well!» This really pissed me off. I wasn’t expecting a refund, or even any money back, but send me a bouquet of flowers for chrissake or an orchid in a pot with an apology note. Any sort of gesture would have made me think they cared.

Absolutely fantastic service! Suzanne was our wedding day coordinator and she did an amazing job on our wedding day. For our package, we wanted high & low centerpieces as well as ceremony décor. I was a bit taken away when I saw Suzanne show up for our wedding day. She arrived quite early to deliver our personal flowers (bouquets, boutonnieres, etc). I knew she was working with us, but she did so until the end of our wedding day.
On the side note, the personal flowers were so amazing. My bouquet was so large and expected, the bridesmaids bouquets turned out beautiful. What was surprising were the pieces for the men. Usuallyyyy by the end of the night, those things are so dead, wilted, and dying, but not ours at all. They They were still very perky, beautiful, stayed intact. Suzanne even gave us a couple extra just in case, but we didn’t have to use them at all! Also, the cuffs for the women were beautiful. They put it on some type of strap thats very comfortable to wear (and take off during breaks) and I couldnt have been happier the way that they turned out.
The ceremony and reception was beautiful and well planned! For our ceremony, the entire place was so beautiful and they paid close attention to details. We’ve been to wedddings where the flowers are blocking the bride and groom, but none of that happened. They moved the taller flowers to the stage and they’re still captured in our photos and look wonderful. For dinner, the flip was quite fast. Again, they did an amazing job. Our cocktail tables looked amazing. Our dinner tables were even better.
Overall, Suzanne and her team did an amazing job for our wedding. Even when our bridal party showed up for the evening, they couldn’t believe what a transformation it was from the rehearsal the day before. I absolutely absolutely recommend!

Thought I already wrote a review about them but… it’s not here so here we go again.
I needed a florist for my wedding and loved their website. It was clean and modern looking and their actual physical location wasn’t too far from my house. Suzanne scheduled an appointment with me right away and I was very excited to go in. Their showroom was pretty in person and they had a nice slide show set up with examples of their work. I liked that their style was modern, but they could probably do something more romantic or traditional if you wanted that too.
I went alone since my fiancé was out of town and had about an hour meeting with Suzanne and her assistant. Thought I had found my florist but while I was waiting for a cab in the downstairs part of their building, I heard the assistant say in a mean-​spirited voice «Could she HAVE a personality?» and then Suzanne laughed. Think they thought I had left but then they hushed their voices a bit. Even if it was/wasn’t about me, I still thought it was unprofessional. We were talking about flowers, I told you what I wanted and cracked a few dry-​humored jokes which you laughed at. Either way, I’m paying you to do a service… you just lost yourself close to 5k.
In the meantime, I made an appointment at Ashland Addision Florist and met with a very sincere woman who seemed to like what she did and you could tell she worked hard. She gave me a quote before I even walked out, and I signed with her that very second. Gowder took over 3 weeks to send me an estimate which was over my budget. To be fair, Ashland was a little over but worked with me to get it down to something that was a little more in line without sacrificing much.
Gowder felt a little more ritzy but I need to be able to like and trust the people I’m working with, and they need to be able to send me an estimate sooner than 3 weeks.

I LOVED everything about our experience with Anthony Gowder. Everyone we worked with was the oppositite of pretentious (very rare in my opinion when it comes to wedding vendors!) and extremely helpful with invisioning the «big day.» My peony bouquet was stunning and the centerpieces were gorgeous. I’d highly recommend Anthony Gowder to any bride!

Amazing service, beautiful designs and flowers. We worked with Greta and she was great at listening and understanding exactly what I wanted. The flowers were so fresh, they lasted almost a week after the wedding was over. At first I thought that Anthony Gowder would laugh at our small budget, but they were totally willing to work with us every step of the way.

Anthony Gowder Designs provided the flowers and décor for our Lake Geneva wedding this summer. Anthony and his wife Stephanie were so fun and easy to work with. The colors we chose for our wedding was green and white — Anthony creatively played up the textures and shades of green throughout the design. They immediately understood our concept and style after our initial meeting. Every detail was well executed and truly unique. We were overwhelmed with how beautiful the tent looked on the day of our wedding. AGD lives up to their elite reputation and sets the bar for excellence.

Beautiful wedding flowers! Greta was outstanding in helping and changing things 20 times. Only complaint was that the delivery to the my room the morning of was late.

We used Anthony Gowder Designs for our civil union ceremony and they were fantastic! Our bridal bouquets were perfect and the centerpieces were all a little bit different, but exactly what we were looking to create. We gave Greta some general ideas and she gave us beautiful flowers for our special day. Greta is helpful and friendly. Everyone at the reception commented on the unique design of each arrangement.
Mary & Hiliana

My comments on Anthony Gowder Designs are mixed. They did a great job working to understand what we wanted, explaining their concepts and mocking them up. All the individuals within the company were very friendly and great to work with. Leading up to our wedding, we truly believed that what we were going to get would be perfect, however, that was not 100% the case.
The bridal bouquet, bridesmaid’s bouquets and groom/​groomsmen flowers were perfect. As for the centerpieces at our reception hall, we were a bit disappointed. I really would have the echo Melissa’s comments above. The final product came in much smaller than the mocked up originals and certain centerpieces were NOTHING like what was ever talked about. A few of the centerpieces for the highboy tables were awful. Instead of a natural «river-​rock» motif some vases were filled with neon green slime jelly and weird accented plastic balls and squares. It truly looked like something out of a Nickelodeon commercial. All of this seemed weird b/​c some of the centerpieces looked amazing and some did not.
At the end of the day, we also spent significant $$ for our flower budget assuming everything would exceed our expectations and we were disappointed when they fell short.

Overall, I probably wouldn’t recommend Anthony Gowder. They were a recommended vendor through the Grand Piazza, and I had a very positive experience meeting with them and during the showing. The wedding day was a different story. For the high price we paid for the flowers, we did not get what we paid for.
1) Centerpieces
a) They had even less flowers in these arrangements than the showing, after they ended up charging me $ 10 MORE per centerpiece to add more flowers to make them «tighter and modern» as in my contract. I feel like the bait and switch was pulled here as these did not look tightly mounded or modern to me as promised (again with the $ 10 extra for this specification). Plus, we took out the seeded eucalyptus in our initial showing because I did not want greenery in my arrangements. For some reason it some type of green leaves replaced the extra flowers. I was very disappointed when I saw those leaves. When I complained about these to at least get my $ 10 back for not being as promised and having less flowers, I was told that «the recipe used for your wedding and there were not less flowers used.» I had 5 other people at my showing that say otherwise and agree with me and my husband.
2) Many of the flowers were already wilting/​dying at our 3:00 mass
a) The bouquets were beautiful, but you can see in all these pictures that they are dying and wilting
b) My grandmothers wrist corsage fell apart during church.
c) All of the boutonnieres completely fell apart. Our pictures look terrible with the flowers. I couldn’t not get many of our photos enlarged due to the wilted flowers
When I complained, I was told that «–Regarding the bouquets and boutonnieres, the handling of the bouquets and the temperature in which they are handled effect the flowers. Since they are a natural, organic material, these things effect them. If the bouquets are set down on a hard surface, some bruising may result.»
I can tell you that these bouquets (especially mine), was not set on a hard surface. The only place it was set was on my lap. I was so embarrassed that my flowers had died. I have never seen such a thing at a wedding, even friends that have paid half the price for flower.
We went over our budget for flowers because we felt like we were going to get such high quality flowers, but this was definitely not the case. Let me know if you would like to see any of the photos of the flowers, I’d be happy to pass them along.