Me: OH, speaking of flowers, just so you don't get freaked out about who might be stalking me, I'm getting flowers delivered to myself next week.
Adam: Wait, what?
Friend: That is brilliant! I am totally stealing that idea.
Here's the background on flowers in our relationship: I really don't get them much. Maybe for our anniversary, maybe for my birthday, or Valentine's...but maybe. Last year, when Adam was telling this particular friend about our dinner reservation, she suggested he call a local florist and get flowers delivered to our table at the restaurant. He looked into it, and just about had a blood vessel burst when he heard how much a small bouquet would cost when you factored in delivery.
That's the thing. Flower delivery is expensive, and the man has perpetual sticker shock. When we were first married, he was working at a company, and was sharing a secretary with a few guys. On Valentine's Day, she asked Adam if she wanted him to order flowers for me. She was doing it for the others - in fact, she had their "important dates" saved in her calendar and was always the one to choose and order the flowers. Adam hadn't had a secretary before, the idea of someone else ordering flowers for your wife seemed almost like a caricature of the "big businessman", but hey, why not? One less thing to do for Valentine's Day, and obviously this woman had a good idea of what to get. She asked him if I had any preferences, and he said that I would probably like anything and to just get what the other guys usually went with.
I was happily surprised to receive the flowers on Valentine's Day, and thanked him profusely. He was glad I liked them, but a few minutes later said "yeah....I'm probably not doing that again".
It was a beautiful arrangement, but apparently, with delivery, this particular arrangement was far beyond what he thought flowers should cost.
Like, a good hundred dollars more than what he would be comfortable spending at the grocery store florist. And when he, recovering from his sticker shock, asked the woman who'd done the ordering, she shrugged and said "that's what delivery flowers cost!"
And yeah, he figured that if he'd be spending that much, it was going to be on something that had a little more staying power.
So I haven't gotten a delivery since.
And because he works from home, I'm not even the beneficiary of the I stopped at the grocery store on the way home flowers. I'm home. He's home. I'm the one who goes to the store. He hasn't actually said it, but I bet it's been on the tip of his tongue to just tell me to pick up a bouquet I like the next time I run out for diapers.
I've also had some really crappy experiences with online flower shopping. They're expensive. The sites are overwhelming. Then, we've had deliveries delayed (missing a grandmother's birthday!) and flowers that arrive looking shopworn and sad, and always, always smaller than pictured. I went off on one of these companies once and received, as an apology a five dollar coupon. It was not worth it to me at ALL to use this when I knew I'd be spending much, much, more for a crap shoot of what I got.
So a couple of weeks ago I got an email from The Bouqs Company offering me a free bouq. Now, not to toot my own horn, but I get a lot of emails. And only, like, fifty percent of them are spam. Or scams. Or insane. This particular guy wrote in a style that I really liked. You could hear him talking to you through the email and he was genuinely excited about his company.
Or insane. Crap.
I mentioned it casually to a friend of mine and she said "oh, was that the one on Shark Tank? That's a cool idea".
It was. And it is.
Forty bucks a bouquet - all in. It's online flower delivery - simplified. No searching through sort by highest to lowest price or wondering what the shipping and handling charge will add to the bottom line. Forty bucks - done. You go in, knowing exactly what you are going to spend, and can browse the site without even glancing at the price. They simplify the bouquets - instead of focusing on hundreds of options, they update constantly to current styles and focus on simple and lush. Rather than feeling overwhelmed, the website is minimalist and inviting. Roses, lilies, the good stuff (no "filler flowers" as Charlotte York would say). Plus, they have all kinds of friend referral promotions. If you refer two people, you get a free bouquet. And they each get $10 off.
They offered me one to check out. I went with the South American roses - the Dawn bouq. They are literally grown above the cloud line, on the side of a volcano, on the equator. I mean, these suckers are gorgeous.
Very easy. They were delivered in the morning, and had the instructions right on the box for optimal arranging. You don't get a vase, which for me, is actually great news. I don't need more vases. I was supposed to get a dozen roses, but when I opened, clipped, and arranged, I found I actually fourteen. Plenty for a nice arrangement.
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| I have NEVER seen a rose this color. |
If you go with California flowers, you can literally get them the next day - less than twenty four hours from cutting to arranging on your table. And you get the whole "they were grown in the USA" thing. If you go with South America, delivery takes a little longer. Since, you know, they're coming from a volcano in Ecuador. But every bouquet they put together is cut on demand - no waiting period in cold storage (most flowers are in cold storage for over two weeks!) and it's a much "greener" process. No wasted flowers that were cut and never used.
Now if you can't imagine that a $40 bouquet could possibly serve your needs, you can double the size for another ten bucks. Want to triple the size? Seventy bucks. So, that would be 36 roses, shipped overnight less than 24 hours from cutting, for $70. Now I don't have a vase that would even fit that many roses. But hey, maybe you're fancier than I am. I started with the standard bouquet, because I really wanted to see what this flat forty bucks gets you. These are so stinking gorgeous that I can't believe I could have doubled it for ten more dollars.
They've got all that other stuff too. You can set up automatic delivery in a few different ways - monthly, by event (Grandma's birthday anyone? Valentines? Anniversary? Birthday? All those sneaky events!), and even as a random surprise.
Do you hear that men (if there are any) who are reading this? You can set up random delivery. So you get ALL the romance points for the "just because", with no sticker shock, and virtually no effort. HOW IS THIS NOT A WIN? Even my flower cynical husband can get behind this. He said "if this is for real, I might actually buy you flowers sometime". Coming from Adam, this is huge. The man is stubborn.
Best part? They made my house cleaner. Because I wanted to make sure that flowers this pretty have a pretty place to live.
Win. Win. Win.
