Thank goodness Neal Linville did all the floral design for my daughter’s November wedding! When you’ve got 60 days for what should take a year, you need a lot from the core team of providers. Neal delivered, not just gorgeous flowers and flawless execution, but also great counsel at every step. He knew our venue (Winchester Opera House) inside and out, and his long history with its staff made coordination easy. But his contributions went way beyond floral design. He helped a bride and her mother — both of us stubborn as mules — resolve differences with just the right mix of honesty and humor.

As a floral designer, Neal took the time to know the bride, through conversations with us and the dress she had chosen and her Pinterest boards. And then he went to work adapting her ideas to the season and the venue, managing the sourcing challenges of a tight timeframe. The most stunning flowers in her bouquet were only there because Neal had reserved them weeks out. But we also appreciated that as the color scheme evolved, even in the week before the wedding, Neal was flexible about adapting his designs a bit further. The results were richly beautiful and distinctive.

We couldn’t have asked for better communications. From Day 1, every call or e-mail or text got an almost immediate response. That included help with referrals to other providers, and he never steered us wrong. We also loved Neal’s accounting and invoicing. He uses a simple spreadsheet to track costs by category that was simple to follow and use in the budget tracking. One thing that made clear was that he’d used good judgment in allocating our floral dollars.

Thank you, Neal Linville!