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!!!

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.

ANEMONE'S & GLITTER "IN THE COOLER"

We are happy, happy, happy, to be rich in anemone, blue muscari, hydrangea, hellebores, scabiosa, tulips, and roses. To give some typical spring flowers a little bit of winter shimmer we hit our blooms with tack 2000 and glitter. Yes glitter. We had major fun in the flower shop this week preparing for Saturdays wedding. We will be styling and designing lots of different areas, so we will keep you posted but for now here's whats "in the cooler."

These blue muscari were sprayed with tack 2000 and then we rolled them in glitter. The blooms then jumped into my bridal bouquet.

My brides bouquet is so PRETTY!!!

For the maids we added glitter and sparkle to the silver brunia and the dusty miller.

Our bouts and corsages will shimmer as well.

We even crystalized some hellebores, we were full out mad women today glitterizing everything...

Our centerpieces also are wearing lots of... GLITTER!!!

My sweet baby Grace, has also found a new love for all things that GLITTER since her 2nd birthday last Sunday.

It looks like we are going to have a bright and sparkly weekend. I hope you do to!!

BEAUTIFUL MIDDLEBURG WEDDING - LARA

On Thanksgiving weekend, my bride Lara married in the town of Leesburg. The wedding reception took place at the Middleburg Community Center. This was an awesome Loudoun wedding. I am head over heels for this event, the photography, the gowns, the flowers, the couple, all perfect. Many thanks, to photographer Kate Headley for sharing her gorgeous work with us. She captured this wedding incredibly.

Thanks also to planner Jamie Sears of Simply Chic Events, and Lisa Schulz, The Posh Planner for teaming up on such a beauty.

Lara and Steve!

Lara's amazing bouquet was created with pink mocha roses, Yves Piaget pink cabbage roses from california, pink peony, hot pink cabbage roses, spray roses, pink ranunculus, silver brunia and silver dusty miller. The bouquet was bound with grey velvet trim from Britex Fabrics in SFO.  The family rosary was added to the bouquet.

Notice how the guys have coats, but all of the pretty girls are freezing in sleeveless dresses. Why do we do this to ourselves?

Mercury glass vases were filled with all the flowers of the day. Don't let those Yves Piaget roses fool you, they look just like peonies in this picture.

These crystal candle holders are new inventory that we actually acquired from Lara. We are excited to be offering this romantic centerpiece option this year.

For an extra treat enjoy Kate Headley's 8mm film of Lara and Steve's wedding day.

 

 

BRIDAL BOUQUETS

Just for fun I created these stunning bouquets. It is always a pleasure to create for creations sake. The first bouquet was designed with coral charm peonies, dusty miller, and silver brunia.

My calla lily bouquet was created with 22 stems of white mini callas and sexy black feathers. I used a vintage brooch from my antique jewelry collection. This bouquet is contemporary, sleek, and stylish.

Black privet berries were used to add a touch of drama to this classic garden bouquet. The flowers used were white hydrangea, white hybrid delphinium, white gooseneck, and white anemone. Green seeded eucalyptus was used to loosen up the bouquet.

Hope you loved some of our latest designs!!!

Genevieve Leiper was the photographer that so perfectly captured our work!