The Full Bouquet

Friends, FedEx and "in the cooler"

Today was quite the day, we are quickly moving back into full throttle Holly mode. The day started with baby Grace at 6:00 a.m., once I had her settled I packed lunches and I prepared for my first client of the day who was coming at 8:30 a.m. I had a floral design student arrive at 10:00am and then we went into designing. My first piece of the day was Lynda's bridal bouquet. I knew Lynda when she was 7 years old. I used to date her brother and I spent a lot of time in their home when I was young. Her family was absolutely the reason why I wanted a big family. In fact Lynda was the 7th child of the family and I have 7 kids as well. Her family seriously had a big impression on me. I adored this young lady and I recently reconnected with her in SFO. She literally saw that I was in CA. through Facebook and we agreed to meet. It had been at least 27 years since I had seen her but we had a blast meeting as adults. I promised her that when she married I would do her bridal bouquet. Being true to my word I FedExed my first bridal bouquet to CA. Yep California, lets all hope, wish, and pray that the bouquet makes it safely to the little girl I knew and loved.

I created Lynda's bouquet of wine toned callas, black magic roses, and black beauty roses. The bouquet was placed in a paper mache bucket.

We stuffed cotton into the center of the callas to protect the lily, we wrapped the bouquet in cotton t-shirts and stuffed the bouquet into a box. We actually stuck the bucket to the bottom of the box with putty, hoping it would make it more secure. We wrapped cotton and paper all around the bouquet to keep it tight and snug.

We also placed a grooms boutonniere in the box.

Making this bouquet was such a pleasure and I am hoping this story has a happy ending. I am sure I will twitter the results tomorrow. I am so excited for Lynda and I am so glad I got to be a part of her wedding.

These lovely designs of yellow and gray were created for our friend Jamie of Simply Chic Events.  

Next we started designing for tomorrows wedding. During this time my student just watched the comings and goings of a day at Holly Chapple.

These designs will be placed in silver compote bowls

I designed a bouquet of gray feathers, white roses, sahara roses, blue hydrangea, silver brunia, and dusty miller for tomorrows bride.

Huge balls of blue hydrangea were created for my silver stands.

Here are the pieces hanging "in the cooler".

We also had a visit from my man Don.

Don is doing an exhibit tomorrow and we created a centerpiece for his table using foliage's and branches from his property. Seeing Don was such a happy thought. We LOVE Don and I am ready to see him at my door every week. He is my favorite neighbor! Yep I will say it again we LOVE Don!!!!

We also had a visit today from photographer Genevieve Leiper and my past bride Kristin ( a story about her is coming soon.) The house was hopping all day long. Throughout the day I was able to answer questions and share knowledge with my student. We did a final consult at 5:00pm and sometime after 6:00pm my student left. When I had a few minutes to reflect on the day I was blown away by all that had happened.

My last big project of the day was ordering flowers for my sisters wedding. Next week I will be designing in TX. Being the nontraditional bride my sister just sent me pictures of the dresses and the colors of the wedding today ( I could kill her). Yep this one will be the challenge of a lifetime. She keeps saying "its no big deal, you can do this, it's only 25 tables." I can already hear the fighting and the screaming. Where are my scissors? Vases you needed vases?

Happy night!!!

SEXY BRIDAL BOUQUETS

In December I provided photographer Anne Robert with two bridal bouquets.  I made them just for fun and for the sheer pleasure of having more of Anne's amazing images in my portfolio. The first bouquet was inspired by the incredible burgundy hydrangea leaves that were growing right out my front door. I added blue privet berry, red cabbage roses, red tulips, arborvitae from the garden and magnolia to complete the design.

The next bouquet was created with white mini calla lily, white tulips, white cabbage, silver brunia, white cabbage roses, dusty miller, ornithogalum, dried wheat and lotus pods. The bouquet was wrapped in burlap.

I love these bouquets and I love these photographs. Thank you Anne for capturing my work so beautifully.

Happy Day!!!

SEXY BOUQUETS

This lovely bouquet was created for a photo shoot last Spring. I used white phalaenopsis orchids, double yellow tulips, brazilia berry, vendella roses, dusty miller, sahara roses, and seeded eucalyptus.

This bouquet was created with purple lilac, burgundy spray roses, wine colored snapdragons, purple anemone, seeded euc, blue privet berry, and purple hyacinthus.

Purple tulips and stock were used to create this very simple bouquet. Fiddle head ferns were used to give the bouquet a bit of flair. Hand crocheted florets adorned the stems.

All images taken by Julie Renee Photography.

Happy day!!!

SARAH WHITEHALL MANOR- LOUDOUN WEDDING

Happily for me my brides are sending in pictures from their weddings last year. Hallelujah because I love, love, love, having pictures of my work. Especially this time of year as I am looking through my pictures with client after client. Thanks to photographer Len Spoden for capturing Sarah and Jason's Whitehall Manor wedding, this past June. Loudoun weddings are always amazing this time of year.

The brides bouquet was created with pink peony, pale pink sophie roses, candy bianca roses and antique green hydrangea.

Maids carried bouquets of white carnations, white hydrangea from my garden, dusty miller, green hypericum berry, white phlox, and white limonium.

Small jars of honey were given to guests as favors.

Half of the centerpieces were designed on vintage glass cake plates. We used snapdragons, ferns, peony, spray roses, roses, larkspur, berry, and fillers from my garden to create these lovely arrangements.

The other half of the centerpieces were arranged on my white iron stands. This elevated half of the centerpieces and that really made the reception room feel festive.

Happy married life Sarah and Jason. I am so glad I got to do your wedding flowers.

WINTER WEDDING- WHITEHALL MANOR-GLITTERIZED

This past weekend Holly Heider Chapple Flowers, had the pleasure of managing and styling Lauren's wedding at Whitehall Manor.  Every wedding we work on is a fabulous learning experience, and this wedding was no exception. Lauren and her mom are both busy teachers. They had some really great ideas for the wedding but they needed help getting everything set up and cleaned up. Since it was Winter, we had a little extra time on our hands and we took on some projects we have not taken on before. Essentially we had wedding withdrawal and time to help. The family had a place card display and candy bar that we did the styling and set up for. The ballroom would also need to be transitioned from wedding site, to reception site, so it made sense for us to stay on and help. 

We also set up the ceremony area by placing programs in all of the chairs, and reserving seats for the family.

This windowsill became the backdrop for the wedding, it leads up to an original huge arching window. This makes for a beautiful ceremony site. It is enormous and when we have a wedding indoors at Whitehall I love to use several centerpieces and tons of candlelight in this space.

Maids carried gorgeous bouquets of dark purple carnations, hydrangea, silver brunia that had been dipped in glitter, purple tulips, purple roses, lavender stock, and purple anemones.

Guests were invited into the original ballroom of the estate for cocktails.  Here they picked up little snowflake ornaments that directed them to the correct table.

We took great pleasure in glittering many of the flowers for this wedding. It was a technique we created over the Winter and fell in love with, so we were dipping flowers in glitter constantly. This wedding became our glitterized wedding.

See what I mean, this window is so pretty.

To create the brides bouquet we used purple hydrangea, purple and blue anemones, black baccara roses, mamy blue roses, agapanthus, and blue muscari dipped in glitter of course. Great grandmothers brooch was used to bind the bouquet. Notice it is silver and blue and could not have been more perfect for this purpose.

The glitter was important because the family had a subtle snowflake theme throughout the event. It was the glitter that made these typical Spring time flowers Wintery. We used dark purple hydrangea, purple cabbages, purple & blue anemones, purple carnations, purple mums,  ranunculus, snapdragons, delphinium, stock, muscari, tulips, hellebores, and scabiosa throughout the evening. Dusty miller and silver brunia were dipped in glitter to make the large centerpieces sparkle.

My silver mercury glass went perfectly with the look of this wedding.

In order to keep the family on budget we repurposed many of the florals. We were busy all night moving flowers from location to location. The maids bouquets, and the altar designs became centerpieces, and the place card table designs became the displays for the buffet.

Our candy bar creation was amazing and we had a wonderful time buying inventory for this space.

We loved designing the candy bar and we will be happy to design these in the future. We now own all of the glass, scoops, and fun little accents that make this type of design awesome.

It was a true pleasure to be with the family throughout the evening as we are typically home fast asleep when the fun is going on. This was a very busy night for us and it was amazing how much time went into setting up this wedding.  Our being here throughout the night was essential as there were so many jobs as florists we needed to do including the major set up and an outrageous breakdown. Our lovely new crystal stands took 3 people an hour to build & set up and 3 people an hour to take apart and box back up.  We often think as rental props as less expensive but moving all of that inventory in and out of a venue is insane. We had a full cargo van of non floral products that included glass, candles, votive's, candy bar equipment and crystal stands.  Flowers arrived in an additional cargo van.

Many thanks to DJ Aaron Hahn who kept the night moving.  Aaron owns the DJ company Matrimonial Sounds. We also had the pleasure of working with photographer Mike Pullum who was a friend and co- worker of the bride.

Many thanks to wedding planner and stylist Vicki Grafton of My Simple Details who came to photograph the evening on our behalf. Vicki is an awesome designer and a budding photographer. Vicki did an amazing job capturing our glitterized wedding. This was another fabulous Loudoun County Wedding.