Hampton Park newlyweds Maree and Gary Hoy enjoyed a wonderful wedding recently despite their florist never delivering the flowers.By Rebecca Fraser
A HAMPTON Park bride was almost forced to walk down the aisle without flowers recently when her florist failed to deliver the wedding bouquets.
Maree Hoy and new husband Gary had organised a surprise wedding bash on Easter Saturday with close friends and family under the impression they were attending the couple’s engagement party.
Mrs Hoy had pre-ordered the flowers, including her bridal bouquet, buttonholes for the men, corsages and two floral wrist bands two months before the wedding, and had paid in full for the items four weeks before the nuptials.
The new bride had made arrangements with Dandenong Central Florist, within the Dandenong Plaza, to deliver the flowers on the Saturday evening in time for the 9pm service.
However, the flowers never came, and desperate phone calls to the florist went unanswered as the business had closed for the day, and shopping centre management was unable to locate the shop owners.
Mrs Hoy’s best friend was then forced to make a mad dash to the supermarket at 7.30pm and purchase all the flowers she could find to try to create not only the wedding bouquet but also the corsages and other floral items.
Luckily, an interstate guest had brought Mrs Hoy a bouquet of roses as a gift and, unbeknown to her at the time, her present soon became the bridal bouquet.
“The guests were starting to arrive and we were still trying to cover up the fact that we were really getting married,” Mrs Hoy said.
“When my friend gave me the bouquet as a gift I thought that is it – that is my bouquet. Someone else bought rose petals for the bed and we used those too.”
Mrs Hoy said her best friend missed the first hour and a half of the celebrations because she was in a bedroom trying to make the floral arrangements.
“People were asking where she was but we could not tell them as it would have spoiled the surprise,” she said.
Despite the hiccup the couple still enjoyed a wonderful wedding, but Mrs Hoy said the incident had caused unnecessary stress on her big day.
“It did not ruin our day as there is much more to a wedding than having nice flowers,” she said.
“It was still something we could have done without though.”
Due to the Easter weekend, Mrs Hoy could not contact the florist until the Tuesday when the couple was already away on their honeymoon.
She did receive a $130 refund from the florist, but the business refused to foot the $100 supermarket bill.
The News tried unsuccessfully to contact the manager of the business on numerous occasions.
