Potomac Floral Wholesale

As I’m learning is the case with floral wholesalers, you have to be okay with a certain level of chaos. Trying to place my wedding flower order in the midst of holiday plant season might not have been a great idea on my part, since there were like 2 938 498 234 people hauling wreaths and holly plants in and out of the doors. All’s well that ends well though, and hopefully I didn’t creep too many people out hanging around the poinsettias while waiting for my turn to be helped.
This place is exactly what you’d think: a giant warehouse filled with flowers, plants, greenery, and whatnot. There’s a very nice floral supplies section in the back which is set up like a real shop, with dedicated people to help you pick the exact right kind of ribbon and vases.
They have tons of different flowers on the floor, plus many more you can order, and their staff is efficient and knowledgeable. I only have ever been to one other floral wholesaler in the area (Middle Atlantic in Alexandria), but I have to say that I’m very impressed with Potomac’s operation in comparison. It seems MUCH more well organized, way more efficient, and the prices were fantastic!
Natalie helped me sort through the 1 394 829 834 different kinds of roses there are, made recommendations, and was able to secure me some awesome discounts on my bulk order for my wedding. I’m getting literally hundreds of amazing, diverse flowers for my wedding and spending less than $ 500! I can’t wait to pick these puppies up and start the floral preparations in January.
I highly recommend using Potomac Floral Wholesale if you are looking for quality flowers at a great price. Their online shopping system makes it really easy to identify what you’re looking for, or you can pay them a visit in-​person and they’ll be able to help you out that way. I will update this review with photos of my flowers once we pick them up and get them all prepped for the big day!

The selection of flowers here is great. I came here looking for flowers for my wedding and got everything I needed and then some for less than $ 500. The selection of roses can be overwhelming. There are so many to choose from!
When arriving here its a bit confusing if you’ve never been several times before. You can’t tell who is a customer and who is an employee, and during the week its really busy and people just stare at you. No one greets you or asks if you need help. You’re pretty much on your own and when you ask for help they seem annoyed. Take photos of what you like then track down an associate to give you prices. This seems to work the best. When I placed the order it took a couple days for anyone to respond. I ended up calling a few times before they finally emailed me a quote. They said they emailed it to me a couple days before, but that wasn’t the case. When I arrived to pick it up 2 days before my wedding they couldn’t find my order. It took 20 – 30 minutes of digging in another room before they found it, one box at a time. But once it was located, the flowers were great and I ended up grabbing a couple new things that were not there on my previous visit. Can’t beat the selection or the price, just be aware of the customer service, or lack thereof.

I DIYed my wedding flowers and bought them here. I went in with a sense of what colors, textures, and how much I wanted and they had a great selection and I found everything I was looking for. FYI this is kind of self serve and there are no published prices, though you can ask when it’s not too busy. Also you probably want to go buy close to their delivery days so you get the freshest flowers and best selection. When things run out or are out of season, you are out of luck. Go in on the weekend when it’s quiet to scope things out ahead of time and ask any questions. Ultimately I was shocked at what a great deal we got. I thought I had gotten too ambitious and would have to put somethings back, but everything came in under budget. Our sales attendant was also kind enough to find us some old roses in the back soon to be tossed for cheap so we could break them up for petals.

I came here about a month ago with my wedding florist to pick out flowers for our wedding. I was really happy about this because I knew literally nothing about flowers. When I spoke with a lot of florists there was a certain level of knowledge that was assumed when trying to give an idea of what I wanted. My florist (Rhonda Kaplan Floral Design) took me here and let me have the ultimate visual aid so that we could work together to design things that fit with my vision! And, as an added bonus, this would fit with my budget, as well, because I was only looking at flowers that were in season.
The space is a warehouse broken up into different sections. The flowers are in a refrigerated room, so remember to bring warm clothes! (Literally it was the beginning of August and I was in long sleeves, a coat and gloves). We were able to pull out different flowers and take them to an area of the warehouse where you can kind of lay things out and design (within reason). The staff were all super helpful both in answering questions about flowers and in helping us put things back. The back room is like the lovechild of Michaels, AC Moore and Jo Ann Fabrics. It has every arts and crafts décor type of thing that you could ever want for a party in every color! I want to come back here just for that!
And on the day of the wedding the flowers were just as beautiful and fresh as I thought they would be. In fact, it’s 5 days later and the flowers in the bouquets that I held on to are barely wilting, which is impressive.
I would recommend coming here with your florist to help you get ideas for your party décor, or come here if you will be designing floral pieces yourself! I would even recommend coming here alone to get some ideas and visual assistance to bring back with you to someone else who may be decorating. It’s a really cool (ha! literally and figuratively!) place.

I would probably choose Whole Foods next time. Some of the flowers we ordered for my daughter’s wedding were very nice but others were grim and some ended up on the day of not being available.

If you love and know flowers and don’t need your hand held to pick/​arrange what you want, THIS IS THE PLACE TO GO.
My best friend was getting married this spring and I was the MOH, tasked with doing the flowers for the wedding since I do flowers – NOT professionally, but just as a hobby. But, I had never actually «done» flowers for a formal event on this scale before, so this was a first for me. I did research ahead of time – to include Unilocaling flower places in the area – and found that this place was my best bet in terms of selection as well as price. I called ahead of time to see what the deal was, and they told me you can just show up and walk into their «basketball court-​sized freezer» and have at it. They told me there was no price difference in ordering ahead of time versus just showing up and picking what you want, and since I’m not an expert I still like to see the flowers in my hands and put them together before deciding on arrangements – so I opted to just show up the day before the wedding and wing it. Getting to Silver Spring during early rush hour from Reston was not a fun time, but I was prepared for that and was hoping – which was a gamble on my part – that it would be worth it. Boy, was it worth it.
I pulled up and it was really unclear about where to go, what to do (do you get a cart? Are you allowed to go in on your own? etc.) and clearly none of the staff were concerned about making these things clear to anyone – so I found someone I thought might work there and asked. No carts, no prices on any of the flowers, no one to walk you through – it’s basically a free-​for-​all. I kind of got the impression that selling flowers to individual people was not really the main point of this place, like really all of the staff were focused on something else and it was kind of a bother to have to answer customers’ questions or help them out… like maybe secretly behind closed doors their main function was to be arranging flowers for huge events and then this cooler of flowers they had on the side was like, open to the public for buying flowers if they want but, that’s not their main purpose/​money-​maker. This was fine for me because I know flowers, I knew what I wanted and I didn’t need anyone to walk me through anything – I was happy to just go in and browse and select to my heart’s content with no one trailing me pitching anything or asking how I was doing. BUT, I’m not the normal customer – almost everybody else there was walking around aimlessly, trying to flag an employee down to ask where the roses were or something… one girl next to me even made a comment about how unhelpful they were and asked me if I knew where the carnations were. So, clearly if you don’t know what a carnation is, this place could be a bit overwhelming. But for people like me it’s a dream, and I’m sure the lack of employee attention/​price labeling/​organization of the flowers/​general guidance is part of WHY these flowers can be sold for such low prices and in my book – that’s fine with me!
The two things that were SLIGHTLY annoying to me were 1) you could not bring carts or anything into the cooler, so every time you grabbed a few bouquets you had to walk them back out of the cooler into the main room and stack them on a rack, so it was a LOT of back and forth (especially if you changed your mind, wanted to bring some flowers out to see how they looked with ones you’d already picked, etc.) and 2) that there were NO prices on any of the flowers. I had a very small budget of $ 500 so it was kind of a pain to just grab things and try to figure out myself based on my own knowledge of how rare/​nice a flower was, how much it would be and guesstimate amounts, etc. But, I’m still giving this place 5 stars, so clearly the benefits outweighed these drawbacks.
At the very end an awesome employee REALLY helped me out. The store was minutes from closing and he rung me up and found I was about double my budget. He helped me go through bouquet by bouquet and get rid of the ones that were the MOST expensive and I didn’t need, etc. In the end I basically asked his advice about a couple of different kinds I had left – how much of each I needed to be enough, and he could’ve told me I absolutely NEEDED like, 10 of the most expensive kind that I had chosen, for example, but he told me in his experience 3 would be good enough. We ended up getting down to only $ 60 above my budget and he was a HUGE help.
If this place were closer to me, I would go here for every single flower need – even just an arrangement for my own dining room table. They have every flower you could ever imagine, and 95% of them are INCREDIBLE quality (size, freshness, color, etc.). The prices are unbeatable. NOTE TO ANYBODY DOING DIY FLOWERS FOR A WEDDING: WHEN YOU GET YOUR FLOWERS HOME, IMMEDIATELY CUT ALL OF THEM AND PUT IN WARM WATER. I thought they could go one night without being cut, and half my hydrangeas died. This is apparently something «everybody knows” – but I didn’t!

I made one small order online and it took 20 minutes for anyone to acknowledge me. When they finally did, the person who helped me was very nice. The quality was ok – the flowers were in vastly different stages of bloom, unlike other wholesalers I’ve used before.

3.5 stars
The good:
1. The prices are a bit lower than a typical flower shop
2. Quick service when picking up an order made online.
3. HUGE selection. If they don’t have what you want, you’re probably SOL everywhere else.
The ok:
The quality of the flowers. The roses my wife and I bought were a step down in freshness compared to the roses I recently purchased at a florist on U St. I suppose you get what you pay for.
Overall not a bad place to get flowers, but I’m not sue if it is an especially good value.

We ordered about $ 300 worth of flowers and greens for our wedding. The only things that were delivered as pictured were the fern stems and berries. Everything else was either rotten, missing, or completely different than pictured. I emailed politely multiple times and only ever got a response when I finally had to call to track down customer service. I felt they were fairly rude and refused to take responsibility — they blamed it on their suppliers but it’s not the suppliers’ fault when you put the wrong thing in the box or leave it out completely. I was excited to find a good flower place but ended up having more success from the flower bins at a chain grocery store nearby. Obviously wouldn’t recommend based on my experience.

My fiancée and I are preparing for our wedding, so naturally, we wanted to checkout florist in the area.
This location looked promising because of the reviews, but we were sadly mistaken. First off, their really is no organization in the warehouse. You can’t tell who is an employee and who isn’t, and the 3 people I asked for help didn’t know the prices of anything.
When my fiancée finally found some flowers she was looking for, as soon as she licked them up, one of the lady’s who worked their proceeded to yell at her and tell her to put them back because they were for an order. Extremely disrespectful, and surprising, because, who yells at a floral shop?
What would’ve been great business for them ended up being this sad review, due to really poor customer service. I would not recommend this shop.

I had a wonderful experience with Potomac Wholesale floral. I DIYed my wedding flowers and used them for all of the flowers I had at my wedding. The warehouse can be a bit hectic, but the staff is very helpful. I did a test-​run a few months before my wedding to get a better understanding of how many flowers I would need. I ordered the flowers for my wedding three weeks before and called three days before to make sure they had all of my requested flowers since I read that substitutions are sometimes necessary. All of my flowers were in stock and I was able to pick them up the Thursday before my Saturday wedding. Pick-​up took a bit longer than I expected with staff running around to complete my order, but the order was correct and they were very helpful in loading up our car. I feel very good about the $ 1200 I spent on flowers there. I was able to create dozens of beautiful and full arrangements at a fraction of what they would have cost me through a florist. I received countless compliments on the flowers.

I found them online and drove 45 minutes. For my moms birthday I wanted to fill her office with a whole bunch of flowers. I walked in and met with Dave. He was extremely helpful, super friendly and knowledgable. I told him my budget and he found beautiful bouquets for $ 9.50 a bunch and I bought 35 bunches so he gave it to me for $ 8.50 and even had the guys put it in buckets. I highly recommend them and am considering of using them for my wedding in 2 months.

While I will share that the flowers are absolutely gorgeous, I will also admit that I am a novice with regards to the wholesale flower shops and when I arrived my friend and I walked around and there was a great deal of hustle and bustle. I asked several employees what the protocol was and no one really answered me. I picked several bunches of gorgeous flowers only to discover that they were really, really expensive. One batch of roses was $ 47.99. When I was paying at the register, the guy that checked me out was vividly annoyed that I was asking how much each bunch was. I mean REALLY ANNOYED. I ended up saving $ 100 (my order was originally $ 335.00) by changing out some flowers no thanks to him.

This place is absolutely amazing. I found it while fishing around for places to buy my rehearsal dinner flowers from, and it’s right down the road from my Mum’s place. They have a huge range and selection of beautiful flowers, plants, branches, and the icing on the pudding is the back room where you can buy all the floral related items you could need: ribbon, vases, tape, glittery things. The website’s not the best, but IMHO Potomac Floral is best experienced in person. Evan, the sales manager, dealt with my order and has been so sweet and so helpful (American customer service I miss you). Honestly, if you’re buying flowers, either for an event or an apology bouquet, I can’t see why you’d go anywhere else.

I went to Potomac Flowers to begin getting ideas for wedding flowers. While the selection was broad and the prices reasonable, the employees were not helpful and seemed put out that we were there. Maybe it was a busy day. Maybe we looked like we had no idea what we were doing. Regardless, a lack of customer service means I’m taking my business elsewhere.

Doing my own wedding flowers was a daunting task, but going to Potomac Florals made it a breeze and a wonderful experience! Tony «the long-​haired hippie» went out of his way to help me find the perfect mix of flowers and greens and the price really can’t be beat.
I will definitely be back!

(08/​05/​2013) Great selection of flowers for the right price, especially if you’re buying bulk. The place is a wholesaler, like the sign says; they do retail sales out of the warehouse if you’re a walk-​in, but I wouldn’t expect the same pampering you’d get at a florist in a storefront. We went to pick out some flowers for a small wedding. Best to just go look and see what they have and buy in-​season for the freshest flowers at the best prices.

I used Potomac Floral for my wedding flowers, and I can’t recommend them highly enough! Like many brides, I was astounded by the prices florists charge for acquiring and arranging flowers. So I decided to do it myself, and it was great.
Since our wedding was rainbow-​themed, I picked out 14 different flowers online, and came in to order them in person. I’d recommend ordering in person, not online, if possible — the salespeople are likely to know about options and ways to cut cost that you hadn’t considered (unless you’re a florist, of course.)
When I came in to pick up (2 weeks later), they were already in the process of pulling my order. Everything was there and looked beautiful, really good condition. More importantly, everything held up through a 2 hour drive to the site and then 2 more days sitting in a commercial fridge (in water) before the wedding. I got so many compliments on our flowers and was very pleased with my DIY solution. I also saved at least $ 1500.
One suggestion: if you can, don’t come in in the morning. That’s when the flowers are delivered and when orders being picked up by florists, so everything’s a bit of a madhouse. If you come in the late-​morning or afternoon, you’ll be able to get more support and won’t feel like you’re in the way.

I used this company for my wedding and my sister used them for her baby shower. They are incredibly helpful and the product… the flowers are so amazing. They have everything you could want and if anything is not in stock they will gladly show you some lovely substitutions.
They need a couple days in advance to prepare your order for pick up but, I was a bit of a last minute shopper and ordered the night before. They kindly helped me with everything I needed despite my inconsideration. You can also walk around and pick out things that appeal to you that maybe you glossed over while looking at their online catalog.
The prices are great, staff wonderful… if you need flowers, this is exactly where you should go.

3.5 — 4 star.
Overall I am really happy with my purchase and glad it got delivered really fast. However, the website was not as helpful as I would like to be.
I wanted to send some flowers to a friend. First of all, I believe you need an account to view its website content and browse around. You can browse around without an account but from what I understand, the selections you can view are limited.
After I register, I still did not have complete access to the website. I wanted to check out «price lists & specials» but it still asked me to submit additional paperwork to receive full access.
I really wish the website could be more accessible.
I originally scheduled a Saturday delivery but the shipping address does not have Saturday delivery. So I received a phone call from them asking if it would okay to send out the flowers on a Friday. I said it was totally find and I was happy they gave me a call to ask about it.
I have never been to the store personally and my interaction with this vendor only limits to it website so my review is biased.