Ellen Saffran,
Toledo Public Schools 419-536-7638

the tuesday before the wedding, i get a phone call from ellen. "we have a problem," she says. uh oh. almost all of the flower arrangements that we had planned were composed of one type of flower - light pink ranunculus. when the ranunculus arrived at customs, the agent opened the box and discovered that they were infested with bugs & that the majority of them had been eaten by these ecuadorian pests. ellen had made some calls to wholesales in the US and the only ranunculus should could get her hands on were peach in color - not going to work. so she suggested some other light pink flowers, i did a quick google image search of her suggestions and deciding on light pink roses and lisianthus for the BMs' bouquets and all the corsages & boutenierres. before we finished our conversation, she told me she wasnot going to charge me a dime for the flowers since they are not at all what was originally planned & she didn't feel right about taking my money. she mailed my check back the next day.

that brings us to saturday, the big day. it's 2:00 and the photographer arrives but no sign of Ellen. 2:15 rolls around, then 2:30. No sign of the flowers. This is the first time during the entire wedding planning process that I am angry. Of course, I didn't bring her cell number. I'm calling information, trying to get her house number (like that was going to work) and my uncle and cousin are just about to head out the door to run to kroger to pick up some flowers when Ellen arrives. I immediately felt like sh!t for being angry with her. You see, Northwest Christian Church had moved to it's current location earlier this past year. The church used to meet at a location on Sterns. Ellen had gone to the church's previous location where another wedding was taking place. Confusing? Very much indeed. The pastor at that church figured out that Ellen was at the wrong church, called our pastor to let someone know that the flowers were on their way and gave Ellen directions to our church. She got their at 2:45, was super apologetic and the flower were absolutely beautiful.

i guess she could have called me to let me know what was going on or mapquested directions to the church but then i again, i could have done the exact same thing (i had printed a map and directions for the baker). in the end, her customer service went above and beyond and the finished product was everything i could have hoped for.