Today was Katie's wedding day. We have been waiting a long time for this day. Katie's mom, Linda, completely planned the whole wedding, choosing all of the flowers and the overall look of the day. The really beautiful thing about this is Katie trusted her mother entirely and gave her full reign over the look. Katie wanted to be surprised on her wedding day, and she was. How cool is that? Today we used baby blue hydrangea, yellow roses, cream colored stock, light and dark blue delphinium, iris, and spray roses.

 

The maids' dresses were pale butter-cream yellow.

 

We made flower halos for the flower girls.

 

Linda loves our blog and has been a great fan. We loved working with her. She picked out special votives for every table, had every napkin folded in a love knot and then added a yellow rose to every place setting. She even thought to have a September 11th memory table. All of her hard work paid off, and she gave her daughter an absolutely beautiful wedding. What a great mom!

 

The memory table for September 11th.

 

The cake was created by a dear friend of the family. She needs to go pro.

 

We placed these large arrangements on columns for the ceremony.

The whole wedding was perfect just as we planned. We so enjoy working at Lansdowne. I could go on about this event forever, but it is 11:37 pm and we have a very busy day ahead of us tomorrow. 

Here is a little of what is in the cooler; we are going to be hopping this Saturday.

This weekend's work is stunning. We look forward to sharing all of our floral bliss with you in the next few days.

Holly

In addition to the many hours we spend planning the flowers with the bride and the actual designing of the flowers, we have countless hours that we spend writing recipes.

My son is always scolding me about my blog because I love everything: I love my brides, I love my flowers, I love my kids, I love my bouquets, I love, love, love everything. Not true; I actually hate calculating how many stems I will need for each wedding. This is not to be confused with the part I love, which is writing the individual recipe. I close my eyes and imagine holding my brides requested flowers for her big day. I actually design the bouquet in my head: we will need 9 of this, 12 of that , what about this, let's give her some of that and so on. I then move on down the line: the maids will need 7 of this, 5 of that, and then I have to multiply each item by the amount of maids I have. Every single item has a recipe.  The recipes then have to be consolidated into one big flower request. If we miss one line item, the count is off and everyone is in trouble.

  The recipes usually end up looking like a paper that your English teacher graded. Everything gets crossed out and added to or deleted, depending on the final amounts you need.  In addition to the totals, you have to figure out the smartest way to buy. Some flowers come to me in bunches of 10, some are in bundles of 25 or 50 and some flowers you purchase by the stem. It really is beyond complicated.  I do love my brides, I do love my designs, so I have to struggle through this heinous job every week. We order the flowers for each wedding a week or two weeks in advance.  In truth, if we could do it earlier, it would be better. This is where those dreaded RSVP's come into play. Guest counts even affect the florist. My poor brides are often unsure of their guest counts all the way up to the end, leaving us questioning how many center pieces we need to make.

So I don't love everything, but I do love a lot. Here are some pictures from the flower shop this week, and guess what: I love them.

Don's Dahlias, I love them.

Loved this piece for Tuskies Restaurant; this is for their weekly flower delivery.

Fiddle Head Fern, we really love these.

Love this picture of my girls Debbie and Louise. They are amazing.

Love the color. Love the shape.

An amazing specimen brought in by one of the designers. I have never seen anything like this. And I love it.

Holly

This piece was the weekly flower arrangement for Tuscarora Mill Restaurant. I have been providing flowers to Tuskies restaurant in Leesburg for 17 years. In fact, Tuskies was my first weekly customer. All these years later, they are still one of my favorite customers. Debbie brought the Hydrangea and the speckled foliage's from her house. The Zinnia and Sedum are from my place. Debbie created this piece by blending her garden and mine. This was a favorite design of ours this week. Very simple, and very elegant.

We have several events this weekend. We will be heading to the Fairmont Hotel with very contemporary and sleek designs. We also designed a wedding that will be at the Birkby House and The Sunset Hills Vineyard. Plus we have a wonderful flower order for a birthday party at Tuskies. As I mentioned, we are very busy this weekend.  In addition to all of that, we have been busily booking brides for 2010. It is hard to believe how far in advance next years brides are booking.

Here I am in the middle of making one of my bridal bouquets. If you look closely, you can see a bunch of wires coming from the bouquet.  I wire every single rose when I make the bridal bouquet. I want to reduce the weight of the bouquet for my bride and also the size of the stems. I don't want my brides to hold onto stems the size of a tree trunk. This also allows me more flexibility when I am creating the shape of the bouquet. This process adds a full hour to the labor of creating a bridal bouquet. I fully believe my brides are worth this very labor intensive process.

This will be a cascading bouquet and the process is completely different. I am inserting each stem into an Oasis bouquet holder. Oasis is the green floral foam. This style of bouquet is as close to surgery as I ever want to get. Every little insertion is so tedious.  Covering the plastic holder takes forever.  

In this picture you can see the third bridal bouquet for the weekend. We use a really strong tape called Davey tape to bind the bouquet together. We collar the bouquet with green leaves, so that you cant see the wires or raw stems of the bouquet. In the morning we will bind the bouquets with ribbon just before we head out the door.

More bouquets.

The Birthday flowers.

We are looking forward to seeing these carnation balls Jessie created at our  Thomas Birkby House wedding.

This is our brides bouquet.

Roses, cleaned and ready to be added to the bouquets.

The centerpieces.

Don's dahlias in the cooler.

These are the altar pieces for today's wedding. Below you can see the centerpieces just chilling in the cooler.

We have only one wedding today. With the extra time on our hands yesterday, we went shopping. We found beautiful pitchers, lanterns, glass and garden items. We were very successful. I have just a few photo's from our trip.

Please visit our little spot at On A Whim Antiques this weekend. Our space is full of beautiful things. It is also the weekend of the Lucketts fair.

 

Holly

Friday started with a visit from Mrs. D; she is my bride Dharma's mom. This is the weekend of the bridal shower, and, of course, they needed flowers. Mrs. D has worked with babies for many years. She and baby Grace bonded at our first consultation, and they have been friends ever since.

Dharma's sister and niece came from Colorado to make the shower and her aunt, Mrs. D's sister, came from Holland. Now that is an awesome family.

I am posting this picture because when I saw it I just wanted to crack up. Dharma's niece is the baby on the right, and she is 11 months old. She can talk, and I swear she taught baby Grace how.  Grace has been babbling ever since.  I love when I get to know the whole family.

Here are the designs we created for the shower. These images were taken by the incredible Kate Headley, one of my favorite photographers, who just happened to stop by at the same time. Yes, the morning was a little busy but really fun. I love having visitors.

Kate also took these shots of the shop while she was here.

These are the low centerpieces for today's wedding. Today is Jane's wedding day. Happy Wedding Day! We really love your flowers.

I love this picture. Kate caught a very important part of the whole process: the recipe. I write a recipe for each design. The designers then copy it on whatever they can find and go off to their work station, and they begin the arrangement.

The rest of the horrid photo's are mine. I would not want anyone to think Kate was responsible for the next images.

I shot this photo of Kate while she was here. Mr. Headley, I think you need to see this; look how happy your wife is. Perhaps it is time for one more Headley. Just, think of the incredible photographs you would have with a baby in the picture.

The maids bouquet for today.

The elevated ceterpieces.

Have a great day will be on a flower delivery.

Holly

  Here is our "in the cooler" post for this weekend.  We have a wonderful wedding tomorrow and I am looking forward to making my bride Laura very happy. We also delivered one wedding today and we have a corporate event on Sunday.  There is actually a lot going on but I am keeping some of that secret. Here are a few more pictures that show today's designs.

I am calling it a day. I am so very sleepy.

Holly

  It is 11:50 pm and it is time to hit the hay. We have had a very busy day, but as promised, here are our "in the cooler" pictures.  Debbie, Jessie and Carrie left just about an hour ago, so we had been working almost 14 hours today.  Most people don't realize how many man hours this kind of work takes. I am incredibly grateful that my designers are so devoted, not only to me, but to my brides. Lots of thanks to "City Helen" and "Country Sam" for designing with us this week also.  They have been a huge addition to our team, coming in to help on a regular basis and we are incredibly fortunate to have their help.

Today was Angeline's wedding day.  We created her bouquet with green mini Cymbidium Orchids, green Dendrobium Orchids, hot pink Topaz Roses, pink Attache Roses, and Sophie pink roses.  We added beautiful pearl and diamond beads to the bouquet.  The bouquet also had mini green Hydrangea, green Hypericum berry and pink Phlox.

We created 14 of these very cool centerpieces for her reception at the Lansdowne Resort.

I also wanted to share this photo taken by my daughter, Hannah.  We created some bouquets for a photo shoot yesterday.  My daughter Hannah caught this photo and I think she did an amazing job.

 I had a great day with my brides and with my flower shop girl friends. I think in the last hour, we laughed more than we actually arranged flowers. Jessie may still be crying from laughing so hard. Debbie, Carrie and I can barely move from eating cake, ice cream, and drinking huge glasses of milk.  It is now 12:16 am, Baby Grace is awake, and I need to feed her before I can shut this family, house, and flower shop down. 

Holly

Here we go !!!!!

This is the line up of ladies creating this weekends weddings. Jessie is hiding behind the camera and Sam is hiding behind Jessie.

Caught you Sam, sorry about that I know you did not want us to take your picture.

  Here comes "in the cooler". I have found out that some of my brides like to take a sneak peek before the wedding. I just want to make it very clear, we have a few weddings that look a bit alike so you may not be looking at your bouquet. So if you are sneaking don't freak, if you are more pink than you thought you would be, or more green than you thought your bouquet would be, or even orange. Your bouquet is perfect, you may just not be able to see it in the cooler yet.

  Check out those Dahlia's. I have a secret Dahlia weapon Don's Dahlia's. He sells on Saturday mornings, at the Leesburg Farmers Market.  If you would like some of Don's precious Dahlia's you need to get to market early, Don always sells out. I snagged up 3 different shades of his Dahlia's for this week's designs.

I only have one feather bride, so if you are looking this is your bouquet. Don't you love your bouquet?

Tiffany if you are looking at this piece it is not finished. The bow on top is only to help me remember to bring your ribbon with me to the wedding. I will not tie a bow on top of your lantern, we will have long streamers with no bows. I got it !!!!!

If my other Tiffany for this weekend is peeking these are not your flowers.  I think you should recognize the feather bouquet.

That is it for tonight, I am tired and I am going to bed.  We did kick you know what again.

HOlly 

   We have gotten into the habit of doing a "In The Cooler" post before a event.  We just buzz around really quick, and let you see some of the designs while they are sleeping. Everyone needs to rest before the big day, even flowers. These are some of this weeks creations.

We created 50 of these burgundy and white centerpieces. Yes, that is correct 50. We have a wedding tomorrow for 500 people.

This is our pink and lime green wedding. The bridal bouquet is hidden in the cooler.

Here is one, of two very large altar arrangements. They go with the first photo, we have a red, yellow, hot pink, orange and green wedding at Rose Hill Manor in Leesburg.

These pieces (19 total ) were for a rehearsal dinner tonight, they were created for one of our friends at Design Cuisine.  We used dark Milva Roses and elements from my garden, and some exotics. These were picked up at 10:00 am this morning. Happy wedding Kelly. 

It looks like another full weekend at Holly Chapple flowers, more photo's coming at the weeks end.

Holly

Another really big weekend is about to happen, here at Holly Heider Chapple Flowers. I will treat you with a little sneak preview to keep you dreaming until I can post the weddings. I will not be doing my late night walk through the cooler as the teenagers are also having a party. I must be slightly crazy to add a party to the agenda this weekend. Lets hope it does not rain or the kids will not be outside as planned.
Here are some of this weeks designs, I will let you know over the weekend or on Monday where we have been and what we were doing. For now enjoy this treat.

The Gloriosa Lily. Isn’t she glorious.

Green button Mums used for centerpieces, ring bearer pillow and flower  girl bouquet.

These are the start of our maids bouquets, we need to add white Freesia and ribbon. Right now we are waiting on the Freesia to open up.  A little time outside and the Freesia will be perfect and ready to go to the wedding.

A country style wedding bouquet.

The maids will carry a similar style of bouquet. Many of these blossoms are from my garden.

This week has been so busy the boys just can’t seem to keep up. I really know how to wear out a crowd.  I am glad no one is taking pictures of me at the end of the day, I fall into a work induced coma, very much like my children.

Good luck my brides!! I will see you soon with lots of  lovely flowers.
Holly