This week began with over 100 boxes or crates of flowers. As you can imagine that’s a lot of flowers. With this many blooms to process and design you can bet we have been burning the midnight oil. We have some very important weddings this weekend and one of them is for Sami. I am purposefully mentioning Sami because she is a loyal reader of the blog and I know she is checking in tonight. Sami your big day is finally here and your flowers are amazing!!

We will be hanging this huge wreath on the barn at Sami’s wedding. This is a flower masterpiece.

We also have a peach and cream vineyard wedding. This wedding has some very fun and terrific details and I am anxious to see this wedding come to life.

Here Megan is wrapping vases for Sundays wedding.

This picture totally cracks me up. There was no more room in the cooler so someone hung a box of flowers from two magnets that are attached to the ceiling of the cooler. You have to give us extra credit for being so clever in the cooler.

These flowers are headed to Leesburg for our blue and green wedding. The contrast here is fabulous.

This bouquet belongs to Sami, it’s vibrant blue tones are so beautiful!!

This deep burnt orange rose bouquet is perfect for the fall.

This bouquet blends succulents, organic grasses and lovely natural elements with classic roses. This bouquet was so much fun to create.

In addition to all of the flower designing that has been going on around here, Evan has been working on a really big lighting and drape project. Evan hung over 200 yards of fabric and lights for our big barn wedding.This is so perfectly magical.

Rain or shine, tomorrow is going to be beautiful!!! Now I’m off to bed and I’m gonna sleep like a rock.

Wow, a lot happens here in one week!! When I do this “in the cooler” post and download the images of the week I am always so shocked at all we do. Mostly right now I am just glad for the peace I feel and the sense of relaxation I am enjoying. Ha, as if there are ever quiet and relaxing moments in this house!! Right now Elijah, Sam, and Grace, are absolutely spinning in circles around me and a football is being thrown over my head as I type. We have 3 really wonderful weddings tomorrow. 3 is so incredibly comfortable for us! Please dear flower Gods don’t jinx me for saying that. There goes the peace I was feeling. Just because I felt peace, my inner voice started chanting my all too familar flower delivery prayers.  “Dear God, please watch over our weddings, please watch over my team, please let us get where we are going safe and sound, and watch over my precious petals.” The week started on Monday with these beautiful sample designs I created. We typically don’t do samples but in this case the client purchased samples and it was fun to start the week with flowers.

When I returned from the city, I found Evan had been shopping.

Evan bought a sewing machine. He took a sewing class last week and he literally sewed a full wall of fabric panels for one of our big events coming up very soon. Yes I know this is ridiculously impressive and I can’t quite believe my good fortune. In fact, each day we are more and more thrilled with our decision to join forces. Having him by my side and having him handle so much of the daily operations has been AWESOME and it’s the main reason I am feeling some peace and calm.

Our family room is 32 by 40. Evan sewed panels the full 32 feet width of our room. The blue tape marks on the floor indicated where he needed to cut the fabric. Genius. Tuesday I did back to back meetings with clients, literally all day long, oh and I think we had back to school night this day as well. This was also the day I missed the school bus because I was so engrossed in a design meeting!! Lame mom!!

Our favorite visitor of the week is always Don, of Don’s Dahlias. I am so blessed to have Don and his amazing dahlias in my life. His dahlias are absolutely beyond anything you have ever seen. My brides are so lucky I know Don!!

Once the flowers have all arrived they are sorted into recipes. These pictures show my bouquets before I begin to design.

These pictures show the same flowers after they are turned into bouquets!!

This bridal bouquet is going to the Eastern Shore and it honestly made my heart sing. I love, love, love, this bouquet. The striped green & cream & burg & cream flower is called a swamp lily or a cobra lily. I have only designed with this flower on a few occasions, so I was thrilled to touch, see, and create with this unique bloom.

This bouquet is just plain art!! It will be carried or presented over the arm. The colors and the texture are so perfect. Willow was woven through the bouquet and the brides favorite flower, the sunflower was used as the focal point of the design. This is a style or shape of bouquet I used to make all of the time, and I would  be very happy to see this look make a big come back!! I can seriously pack some flowers in to an elongated bouquet. This bouquet is so rich and warm, but also very happy!!!

This all white bridal bouquet is the epitome of a classic bouquet, it was made with the magical all white cabbage rose called Patience. This rose has become so hard to obtain and so costly that every week I fear I will not be able to get my requested stem count, so I buy from two sources to cover my bases. I don’t leave anything to chance when I am purchasing for a bridal bouquet. The other blooms in this bouquet include regular white roses, stock, spray roses, freesia, and ranunculus. Seeing big healthy ranunculus again is one of the pleasures of cooler weather!!

In this picture you can see Megan, Gaby, Linda, and Whitney!!

Our time together in the shop is always fun and my little ones keep us entertained and delighted throughout the day. This is my Elijah and his first T-Rex. Since Evan has been home I am getting a little more time with the kids and this means the world to me. I am not kidding when I say I work all day, everyday!!

I love this picture of Designer Gaby!! Such a pretty lady, making very pretty designs. Gaby was making these pieces for my mom because I was busy making bridal bouquets. My mother has an uncanny way of needing flowers in the middle of our huge events. Because these arrangements were very important indeed, we were happy to oblige!! My mom is placing these flowers on the altar at church in honor of my grandmothers birthday!! These are very special pieces so I put my hands across each design and gave them a little kiss!! In fact I do this with just about every piece we create, it’s my little floral kiss or touch, to say it has passed my standards!!

In addition to designing bouquets today we also did a site survey on another of our big events, one that happens to be next weekend. We did a practice run of how we will drape the ceiling of the barn with fabric and we checked the length on the chandeliers we will be installing over the head table. Once I gave this my little kiss of approval I quickly returned to the studio to get back to designing and I left this work to the boys.

Drop dead gorgeous!!

This is the floor of the cooler, everything is boxed up and ready to go, go, go!!

Wow, that was a huge “in the cooler” post. I think I started this 3 hours ago. I have done dishes, dressed the kids for bed, changed diapers, and heavens knows what else during the writing of this post. I am told constantly that people read this blog and this post. I would really love to have more comments on here, so if you are out there, let me know you are stopping by to check out whats “in my cooler.” Goodnight!!

OMG, I am so tired I can barely believe I am writing this post. My mind is buzzing with all that we have done. Between the bus stops, preschool drops, and diaper changes, we kicked some serious floral fanny. We have so many beautiful things in our 911 cooler we should win an award for decking all of Loudoun County with beauty.

In addition to our regular weddings Evan has two lighting contracts and we have an antique furniture rental as well. I also signed up to donate wedding flowers to a military couple in honor of 911. This couple won the Love and Liberty give away from Musket Ridge Golf Club. Yes its busy here but we are so excited to be delivering our amazing designs. I have several fabulous families this weekend and each one of them is very special to me. We have every bird cage, brooch, mason jar, bridal bouquet, urn, or iron stand ready for delivery. We have lists, lists, and more lists, and we are ready for tomorrow.

Thanks to the fabulous designers that made this week a success and also to Peter, Alex, and Evan who missed the photo op. You all did an amazing job this week!!!!

This is the week, the week we have been waiting for!!! We have two fabulous weddings and we are delighted to be playing with billy balls, and succulents, lots and lots of succulents. This Sunday’s wedding is very special and its for “my boys.” You know how I name my brides, well this wedding is about “my boys”!!!! I have two fabulous groom’s on Sunday. This wedding has been in the planning process for many months. In fact I bought many of their containers and decor items when I was in NYC in March.  Their wedding features billy balls and succulents with a contemporary vibe and feel. I love this couple and I am so honored and thrilled to be providing these unique, sexy, and killer designs to their wedding. Due to the size of their event we declined all other inquiries for many months. After perfectly planning and preparing for their wedding I was approached to take on yet another wedding. Because the boys were under control and because the boys were marrying on Sunday I added a Saturday wedding to the agenda. Deciding how many events we can do in a weekend is always based on the size of the order and the amount of designs we will be creating. 1 large wedding is similar to doing 5 smaller orders. Our Saturday wedding also happened to be about succulents. Holy Holly, am I lucky or what, I got to have two succulent weddings in one weekend.

Our Sat. wedding features crimson, wine, and taupe tones with the succulents.

The bridal bouquet was created with navy viburnum berry, dark purple scabiosa, quicksand roses, silver finesse roses, silver brunia, scabiosa pods, and Don’s dark purple dahlias. The bouquet truly made me squeal with delight!!

Maids bouquets were created with slightly less color than the bridal bouquet.

We wrapped a cylinder glass vase with moss and birch bark to create this container for our place card table design.

Our vintage wooden boxes were used for half of the centerpieces, and we created this amazing centerpiece platform for the other tables.

We started with a styrofoam board that was covered with sheet moss. We made indentations in the foam to hold the glass cylinder vases. The vases were filled with curly willow tips and tomorrow we will fill the vases with water and candles. Flower arrangements and succulents will be placed between the cylinders to complete the design. I am so excited about these pieces.

We will line the aisle with shepherds hooks and hang these bird cage designs from the hooks. Wow this is going to be awesome!!!

Now about my boys…

I know, its mesmerizing isn’t it!!! 20 tables will feature 5 to 7 gatherings. Each table will be slightly different but all will be over the top!!

Many thanks to my amazing husband Evan, he poured me 140 small concrete pots for our place card table. Each pot was planted with a mini succulent or air plant. A chrome plant stake will be added to each pot with the guests name and table assignment.

These big beauties will also be placed on the place card table. We also have chrome lanterns for all of the windows of the reception and at least 75 chrome bud vases. We are rocking this one.

Everything is so perfectly delicious and sexy. I am so excited to deliver this weekends weddings. I am also thankful that today everything is looking a okay, on Weds. you could have heard me scream 6 states away. 1700 billy balls arrived for our boys all rotten and molded, it was one last stab from Irene the hurricane. It seems our flowers sat in the NYC airport waiting to fly. Thankfully I have many sources and I went into 911 action. One of my wholesalers literally sent harvesters into the fields to cut me 1.700 billy balls. The other wholesaler, who’s product was bad also went into 911 action and because I covered my bases twice we ended up with double the billy balls. So you could say I am rich in succulents and billy balls this weekend, I will use the extra flowers to make the chuppah extra extraordinary. Now because our work is done, and this post is going live, I am going up to bed and do what any good wedding addicted designer would do with some free time…

Nighty night!!!

When I look back on this week, I can’t believe all that we have done as a family and as a business. I am sorta shell shocked right now!!!! This week we celebrated Sam’s 5th birthday.

As you can see Miss Grace was happily listening to the birthday song!!

We took our annual first day of school picture in front of the red door with the four big kids and miss Gracie, who had just woken up. The boys were still sound asleep when we headed out of town for JMU.

We dropped off our girls at college. They went prepared with fabulous art in hand, created by Miss Hannah Chapple. As we left the girls at JMU there was apparently an earthquake. I keep telling everyone it was my heart splitting wide open as we left them. Evan and I, did not feel the earth move, but we did notice a great big whole in our family.

Evan worked on some of his new lighting inventory for upcoming events and he tried his best to help me find some balance. This new dance of us working together is strange, weird, often wonderful, and sometimes downright annoying. We went antiquing in several states. We have outrageous new inventory for the flower shop and for our space at On A Whim antiques. Our work was featured on The Brides Cafe, Snippet & Ink, and Style Me Pretty. Lets say we soared through the blogasphere. A birdie also told me we will have a nice little feature in the Washington Post Magazine this weekend.  I am pretty blown away by all of this!! I am also shocked that while I am loosing it as a mom, my business keeps on, and on.

Another of this weeks big successes were Evan’s awesome table numbers. One of our brides needed these for tomorrow and we had to come up with something for her and fast. Evan took an old birch log we had from a past event and cut birch slabs for each table. This was one of those times this week he was way less annoying, and far more wonderful.  In addition to cutting all of the boards he painted all of the numbers as well. Since he did that so beautifully, being a great wife and business partner I asked for a little more. I also had him drill a mini whole in all of the numbers and they can now act as a mini bud vase. Yep, I think I will keep him.

We now have 19 of these beauties!! We should open an Etsy shop. Nope just kidding, we have enough to do.

These charming boxes were made for the place cards and a bark wire finial was created for each card.

Each of our bouquets were adorned with these fabulous medallions by Glen Elm Studios, in MD.  Each piece of pottery featured the wedding date and a lovely little bird. The potter is actually the brides aunt.

For this berry toned wedding we pulled out our vintage wooden boxes and our wooden lanterns. I am in love with these centerpieces and I am certain they will be perfect on the tables tomorrow.

We also have a beautiful green, blue, and white wedding tomorrow. These designs are clean, bright, and crisp. Each piece is fabulous but unfortunately I don’t have a lot of pictures from this event. My camera freezes if I shoot to much “in the cooler.” That of course is incredibly ironic!!

Okay that it’s it for me, I have to get to bed. I have a football game tomorrow at 8:30 am. and then I am going to hopefully deliver our weddings in lovely sunny weather. Lets sleep tight and pretend that a hurricane named “Irene” is not coming anywhere near our home/ flower shop, my brides, or our weddings.

We have been hot after cabbage roses this year as they are quite the rage. I must admit they are worth the pursuit. The cabbage rose is two or three times the size of a regular rose and they are the highlight of all of our designs. The above picture shows a cabbage rose mixed with some of the regular variety roses.  Superstar, right?

I have gone through thousands of these roses this year and each time they arrive safely I do the happy dance. We have taken to picking up a good bit of our roses at the airport, as this has opened up so many opportunities for us. We purchase from five or six wholesalers each week to get out brides their promised petals.

These bouquets feature pink ohara cabbage roses, pink and wine toned coxcomb and calcynia heather. Local green hydrangea,  Don’s dahlias and celosia from my garden were added to the bridal bouquet.

One of our brides will be carrying a mix of blues, lavenders, purples and burgundy. These flowers are very special as this is the second wedding I have down for this family.

Thankfully, we are continuing to get wonderful ranunculus; we typically are unable to get this bloom in the extreme heat of summer.

Little designs were created with spray roses, seeded euc, dusty miller and dahlias–these were created for the cocktail hour.

These bouquets are headed to Maryland and we are very excited about this wedding. Luckily for us, we have two brides who were in the blush pink and cream mode. This only meant more cabbage roses for us.

This bride’s bouquet features white cabbage roses, white and pink ranunculus, cafe au lait dahlias, pink ohara cabbage roses, white ohara cabbage roses, candy bianca roses, sahara roses and dusty miller. Slightly power packed and magnificent, if I do say so myself!!!

Look closely because this bridal bouquet belongs to a different bride. These bouquets are headed to Georgetown. This bouquet is all about the roses and although the tones and some of the roses are the same, the look is quite different. I am also making a huge baby’s breath runner for this brides table. This is a design I have been dying to bring to life. Tomorrow’s the day!!!

We created 14 huge rectangular trays of baby’s breath. The trays will be placed end to end on a long head table, this will create one solid baby’s breath table runner. We will place glass cylinder vases and clusters of roses into the bed of baby’s breath.  This is sure to be amazing.

As you can see, we have so many beautiful things waiting in the cooler and this has been a very wonderful and exciting week for us. I certainly feel a lot better than I did a week ago. The blog is coming back little by little, with the help of family and friends. Evan, my husband, officially started as my partner this week and now life has become a lot less scary. We both will be able to run this business, get kids where they need to be, manage the needs of this family and this property (and trust me it’s a full time job times 10). We should be the poster family for the saying, “it takes a village.” Thanks to all of you that support and encourage our family and our business.

Here is one last shout out today to my new friend Megan Soh, who is a blogger and follower of The Full Bouquet Blog. Megan recently moved to DC from Texas and she is apparently a fan of our little blog. Megan is now working with my amazing friend, photographer, wedding planner, and stylist extraordinaire, Vicki Grafton, but I think I am going to have to scoop her up as well. This girl was adorable. Megan and Vicki put together a little photo shoot out in the yard with some of this weeks lovelies and I cant wait to see the images. Thanks also Megan for sending me these cute photo and now I know how to Instagram!!!

Yep, this is not a happy post. This is an I am crying post!!! These last 24 hours have been so incredibly horrid. Despite my lack of abilities on the computer, I blog. I am most certainly more of a crafty girl, over being tech savvy. Some nights I really wonder why I even bother to blog, but then someone will invariably tell me how much they enjoy my posts. My blog was hacked yesterday and over 40 posts were lost. Each post usually takes me about an hour to write and it’s killing me that my journal is gone. In addition to all of the flower stories I share, I share about our family. Our summer vacation post, Rileys birthday, the announcement about Evan joining our team. It’s all gone, and right now I hate the internet, blogs, and Host A  Gator for certain.  I almost did not blog tonight because I am so angry, tired, and fed up. However, I was on the phone with next weekends bride Michelle and she sweetly said “I hope your blog gets better, and I look forward to your Friday night posts.”  Just that little bit of encouragement made me press on tonight so thank you Michelle!!!! And you know what, in spite of what’s going on in my internet world, there are some really beautiful things “in the cooler.”

We have a “snow wedding” and this has miss Grace totally mesmerized.

In addition to making it snow tomorrow, we are making a candy bar and a popcorn bar.

Thank you Michelle, next weekend it will be your turn to have a bouquet “in the cooler.”

Desi and Rachel

Today we delivered wedding flowers to cousin Rachel who is my niece by marriage. The flowers were designed by the brides sister Desi, who is also my niece, designer Morgan from Petals and Hedges  and by me. This was a true team effort.  Desi is the landscape designer at Morgans garden center. Not only does Morgan have the garden center she is also a floral designer for weddings and special events. We have been referring Morgan and Desi for events when our studio is fully committed for a date. Spending time together designing ensures that my referral is solid.

Desi made this amazing bouquet for Rachel with just a little bit of help from me, Aunt Holly. The flowers and foliage’s Desi and Morgan brought from the garden center were fabulous and they certainly added just the right touch of magic to our designs.

The cafe au lait dahlias from California were truly amazing this week.

Vintage cake plates and old wooden boxes were used to hold the centerpieces.

It was fun to help with this very special wedding and really fun to design with Morgan and Desi.  I am sure they are still in shock from their chaotic visit to design in my studio. While we worked on Rachel’s flowers they saw me deal with the kids, do consultations, work on a photo shoot in my own yard, and supervise 3 other weddings. Yep they got a serious birds eye view of life at HollyHeiderChappleFlowers.  Without further delay here are some of the designs “in the cooler.”

This fabulous bridal bouquet is beyond beautiful, four different types of cabbage roses were used to create the bouquet. It is so full and so large that this is about a 1/4 of the bouquet. I have never seen or smelled anything like this bouquet. LUSCIOUS!!!

This wedding features the softest pinks, creams, and peaches with just a pop of silver.

Soft vintage blues and greens were used for our Oatlands wedding, our Sunday bride is going orange, yellow, and green.

Here is one last photo of a super sweet little bouquet that was left over from yesterdays photo shoot.

Hope you have a great night, and keep following we have some pretty big news we need to share!!!

This post is going to be very short and sweet because I am going to sleep. Here is a quick glimpse of what is in our cooler. Nighty night brides!!!

Good night!!

One of the best things about my job is that I get to change styles, looks, and elements daily. This weekend we are doing flowers for our Rock n’ Roll bride, our Ritzybee bride, and our Library bride.  Each wedding has a unique theme and color pattern. We have been working with some of these girls for months so we can hardly believe that their wedding day is finally here. While my brides are out rejoicing with their families on this last night of being single, we are diligently designing for our girls. Here are some of the beautiful things “in our cooler.”

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As you can see we have a wide mix of colors and styles.

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If you look closely you can see little notes on some of the designs, this helps up to keep organized. This also prevents us from forgetting to do any of the finishing touches. There is done, and there is really done!!

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A very big treat in the flower shop this week was the cafe au lait dahlias. I brought these in from NYC and they belong to Library bride. I have little vintage library drawers for her centerpiece displays. This wedding is beyond romantic.

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This bouquet is almost done, black roses will be added to this tomorrow and a few more black details. This is for our Rock n’ Roll Garden bride.

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Here are centerpieces waiting “in the cooler.” We have lots more to create in the morning and lots to install on the job sites. We will be in DC, Leesburg, and Bluemont tomorrow. Happy wedding eve to our brides!!!