The Bouqs provided me with the bouquet pictured below at no charge, to facilitate my review.  As always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.  I received no financial compensation, but the links here are my affiliate links, so if you buy through them you’ll help me out a little, with no extra cost to you.

(Well, your recipient may be surprised – but that’s the kind of surprise you want!)

Have You Ever Sent Flowers to Someone?

I’m not talking about when there’s someone local and you just call up the in-town florist; I’m thinking more of when you’re sending flowers to your mom, your grandma, a friend, etc. who lives in another state.  You use one of those “big name” floral delivery services, and you think you’re getting a good deal – except then they tack on a bunch of fees, so in the end you’re paying a lot more than you thought.  Ultimately, you don’t know, when you’re placing your order, how much you’re going to pay.  That makes it hard to choose your bouquet.

The very best thing about The Bouqs is you don’t have to perform any mental gymnastics to figure out how much you’re going to pay.  The prices on the site may seem slightly high to start with (compared to other flower delivery service ads) – but that’s because it’s the actual, complete cost you pay.  Shipping is included.  There are no weird fees.  The price listed for the bouquet is the actual price you pay.  (And a regular-sized bouquet is always the same price, so you don’t have to fiddle with comparisons.  You’ll pay a little more if you upgrade to a double size or something, but a standard bouquet = a standard price.)

(Do you send flowers multiple times a year and want to save even more?  Sign up for the concierge service and you get a bit of a discount.  It’s nothing super-complicated or -fancy, either.  You simply schedule at least four deliveries and save a chunk of change!)

The Bouqs is based out of an eco-friendly farm on a volcano in Venezuela.  (That is my daughter’s favorite part.  She’s impressed by the whole “volcano” thing.)  They now also have a second farm in California.  When you order your flowers, they’re cut – not before! – and shipped directly to your recipient, with no middleman.  That means less waste, because the only flowers that are cut are the flowers that are sent.  It also means – surprisingly – that your flowers are often fresher even than what you’d find at the local florist!  (Kind of like produce at the supermarket, the flowers there have often been sitting for a while before anyone ever chooses/buys them.)

So what are the delivery and flower quality like?  Let’s take a look.  When the flowers arrived, they came FedEx.  A signature was required, to ensure they got to a person, rather than sitting around my porch in the heat.  Inside the lid of the box was the note I wrote when I ordered.

(I don’t know if you can read it.  I didn’t write much of a note, since I was just sending them to myself.  It says, “Happy summer!”)

The front of the box was printed with clear instructions for how to care for the flowers.

Honestly, they were packed so well that the hardest part was getting them out of all the packaging.  (These were roses and still had their thorns, so that made it a bit trickier than if I’d been unpacking some other flowers.)  They were in really good shape, though – not wilted or squished or anything.  Pretty impressive after having been shipped in a box all the way from South America!

I had a hard time getting a picture, so my full-bouquet picture just doesn’t do them justice.

Handling the Heat

We abused our flowers.  They didn’t last as long as I’m sure they otherwise would have, but I’m impressed they held up as well as they did under the circumstances.  Ariel’s birthday party was the day after these arrived.  She had a “Hawaiian” party and, given the coloring of these roses, as well as that whole “volcano” thing, she thought they’d be a really good fit for her party – which was in the backyard.

So we carried these poor cut flowers out into the backyard in the late July heat (it was one of the hottest days we’ve had this summer) and made them sit there for four hours.  We were ready to wilt by the end of the afternoon, so that was asking a lot of flowers.  A few of the blooms looked a little rough afterward, but for the most part they still looked pretty good!  Here’s the before:

And here is the after:

See how perky and lovely most of them still are?  (There are a few – the ones that seemed to be the weakest to start with – that got pretty droopy, but mostly these are in great shape.)  Considering this is after four straight hours of July heat, I’d say that’s pretty good.

By the way, these bouquets ship with a couple extra blooms just in case something doesn’t make it.  There are 14 roses here, not 12.  If I pulled the droopiest two flowers this would be looking even more impressive.

Bonus: the sunshine allowed for much better photographs. 🙂  Aren’t these just gorgeous?