AIBU to be really disappointed with my dad’s funeral flowers and how this was handled?
My dad died very suddenly at the beginning of September and his funeral was this week. I was his only biological daughter and organised a lot of his funeral, so I completely accept that emotions are very high at the moment and I genuinely want some outside opinions on whether I’m being unreasonable.
The florist actually knew my dad personally, so this wasn’t just a completely anonymous order.
I ordered several things from her: a coffin spray for £180, DAD letters for £150, a 3D barn owl for £160, and individual flowers for members of the family to place on Dad’s coffin during the committal.
I want to be completely fair from the start: the coffin spray and the DAD letters were lovely. I was really happy with those and I’ve told the florist that. This isn’t me saying everything she did was awful, because it wasn’t.
There are, however, two things that have really upset me.
Firstly, the barn owl.
Dad loved barn owls, so I wanted a 3D barn owl tribute for him. I sent the florist a reference photograph showing the sort of owl I wanted.
I obviously wasn’t expecting a carbon copy. I appreciate that floristry is creative work and every florist will produce something slightly different.
But when I saw the finished owl, I was honestly really shocked by how different it was from the reference.
The reference had the very distinctive heart-shaped face of a barn owl and quite realistic features. What we received looked completely different to me, particularly around the face and eyes.
I’ll attach photographs of both so people can make their own minds up rather than relying on my description.
The florist has since explained that she never copies another florist’s work and that she spent a long time making the owl.
I genuinely appreciate the work that went into it, but my feeling is that if the reference I’d supplied wasn’t something she was prepared or able to recreate reasonably closely, I would rather have been told that when I ordered it. I could then have decided whether I still wanted to go ahead.
It cost £160, so I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect the finished tribute to at least be recognisably similar to the example I’d provided.
There was also the condition of some of the flowers.
I went back to the funeral directors to collect Dad’s flowers less than 24 hours after they had been delivered. Some of the white flowers already looked quite dull/cream and some of the roses looked dry and tired.
What made me notice it particularly was that there were flowers there from other funerals which still looked incredibly fresh in comparison.
The florist has said that her flowers come from Holland and were fresh, and I’m not suggesting that she deliberately used old flowers. I’m simply saying that, for whatever reason, some of ours didn’t seem to last particularly well.
However, the individual flowers are the part I’m actually most upset about.
This wasn’t just an additional bunch of flowers I’d ordered.
It was a planned part of Dad’s funeral service.
I wanted each member of our immediate family to have an individual flower that we would place on top of Dad’s coffin at the committal.
I sent the florist a list of exactly what we needed, with specific flowers/colours for different people. This included things such as sunflowers and blue flowers.
The florist knew Dad personally and the original plan was that she was attending his funeral.
When we discussed these individual flowers, she actually explained to me that normally she would deliver them to the funeral directors along with all of the other funeral flowers, but because she was coming to Dad’s funeral herself, she would bring the individual flowers with her.
So that was the arrangement I understood we had.
I wasn’t subsequently told that arrangement had changed.
Dad’s funeral took place and eventually we reached the committal.
The celebrant started the part of the service where we were supposed to place our individual flowers on Dad’s coffin.
And I immediately started looking around for the florist.
I wasn’t just assuming that a florist would normally attend a funeral or randomly expecting her to produce the flowers.
I was looking for her because she had specifically told me that rather than delivering those particular flowers with everything else, she would bring them with her because she was attending the funeral.
But she wasn’t there.
We were all looking around wondering where the flowers were.
It was incredibly awkward because this was happening during the actual committal of my dad.
Eventually we had to ask the funeral directors whether any individual flowers had been delivered.
They had no idea what we were talking about.
Someone had to go and look for them and they eventually found what appeared to be a bunch/box of loose flowers in the hearse.
We were then trying to work out whether these were even the flowers we’d ordered because they didn’t appear to match my list. There were no sunflowers or blue flowers, for example.
By that point the whole moment had gone anyway.
I’ve since found out that the florist had delivered some loose individual flowers to the funeral directors after all.
Apparently she arrived as they were locking up.
The funeral directors have told me that when she delivered the owl she gave them specific instructions regarding how it needed to be handled/carried, and those instructions were written down.
However, they have told me that they were not told that the individual flowers were for the committal or that they needed to be brought into the service and handed to the family.
So as far as they were concerned, they were simply some flowers that had been delivered for the funeral.
The florist says that she did tell the funeral directors that they were the individual flowers.
The funeral directors say she didn’t.
They’ve told me that if they’d been told those flowers were specifically required for the committal, it would have been written down with the other instructions, just as the instructions about handling the owl were.
Obviously I wasn’t physically standing there when that conversation took place, so I can’t categorically tell anybody which version is correct.
What I do know is what was agreed directly with me.
I had specifically been told that normally the individual flowers would be delivered with everything else, but because she was attending Dad’s funeral, she would bring them herself.
Nobody told me that plan had changed.
So when the celebrant reached that part of Dad’s service, I was sitting there looking around for her, waiting for the flowers she’d told me she would bring.
She wasn’t there, the funeral directors didn’t know they were supposed to provide them, and we never got to do it.
And that’s the part I’m really struggling with.
It might sound like “just some flowers”, but it wasn’t about the flowers themselves.
This was the final thing I had planned for us to do for Dad.
We were each supposed to walk up, place our flower on his coffin and say goodbye before his coffin disappeared.
I’ll never get that moment back.
If I’d known beforehand that the florist wasn’t attending and that the arrangement had changed, I could have made sure the funeral directors knew exactly what the flowers were for. I could have collected them myself. I could have asked somebody else to be responsible for them. There were so many ways it could have been sorted.
But I didn’t know there was anything that needed sorting.
I’ve since spoken to the florist about all of this.
She sent me a long voice note explaining that she spent ages making the owl, that she doesn’t copy other florists’ work, that her flowers come from Holland and were fresh, and that she did tell the funeral directors what the individual flowers were for.
I have tried to be fair with her. I’ve told her that the DAD letters and Dad’s coffin spray were lovely and that I appreciate the work that went into them.
I also completely understand why she ultimately couldn’t attend the funeral. I’m not angry with her for that and I made that clear to her. Things happen and sometimes people simply can’t attend.
My issue is that I didn’t know the arrangement for those flowers had changed when their delivery was tied specifically to her attending.
I’ve also explained that I’ve been to funerals before where family members have placed individual flowers on the coffin, so if what I’d asked for wasn’t possible or wasn’t something she could reliably arrange, I’d have preferred to have been told and I would have made other arrangements.
I’m not looking to destroy someone’s business and I’m not saying that everything she made was terrible.
I’m just incredibly disappointed.
Part of me is also questioning myself because this is all so raw and it was my dad’s funeral. Maybe I’m focusing on things more because I’m grieving.
So I genuinely want outside opinions.
AIBU to be upset about how this was handled?
And separately, looking purely at the floristry and ignoring everything else, would you have been happy with the £160 barn owl compared with the reference photograph?
I’ll attach the reference picture, the owl we received, the DAD letters, coffin spray and photographs of the condition of the flowers less than 24 hours later so people can judge it fairly for themselves.