This is a gratitude post!! In spite of the fact that we were hit and seriously hit by Saturday’s storms, I am very grateful. Every family, house or home takes its share of direct hits, it just happens through the years. Honestly I knew we were due for something, day in and day out we deal with very few complications, other than just plain having to work hard. As a mother and a wife, the fear is always of big stuff like “keep my husband safe,” “don’t let anything happen to my kids,” ” no major illness, no job loss,” the list goes on and on for a mom–we just worry because it’s part of the job description. In addition to my family I also truly worry about my brides, that is one more added worry I carry!!!  On Sunday right after delivering our weddings, a storm like I have never seen hit our home.

Trees fell everywhere; one was blocking the road, one fell and hit my personal van and then reached out and hit my cargo van, another tree fell on my sons car, and other trees fell and surrounded Peter’s fabulous convertible Mercedes. Peter helps us with wedding deliveries, his car was here because he was out on delivery.

How this window survived is a complete mystery!

This window, however did not survive.

Alex’s car

As you can see Peter’s car escaped the damage by inches…

During the clean up, my husband smiled at me and said, “if this is the worse that happens to us we are great!!!” I had to agree and inside I just felt an awesome peace that this was our turn at bad luck, and hopefully this is the worse we will have to deal with.  In addition to the cars it looks like the storm hit my cooler, now that is scary and very frustrating but I know my cooler repair man is awesome, so hopefully the cooler can be fixed quickly and cheaply. Again the cooler is very important to me but it is not a living breathing family member so I can cope. However it is mighty hot “in the cooler.”

One last huge round of gratitude. Just a few miles away my bride and groom were celebrating their wedding, when I looked outside my window and saw the devastation in my own yard, I had true fear for my bride and groom. I kept thinking please, please let my bride & groom, their family and their reception tent be okay.  Via text I was able to reach the wedding coordinator to confirm that everyone was okay at the wedding. I was thankful, thankful, thankful; if the storm that hit our house had swirled through the reception tent at the wedding, I am certain there would have been nothing left of the reception!!! So as you can see we have lots to be grateful for. Now it’s time to deal with rental cars, insurance, and the refrigerator man… Happy day!!

It’s 12:30 a.m., and we are just calling it a day here at Holly Chapple Flowers. Many thanks to designer Debbie, who stayed super late to go over all of the flower orders and contracts for next week.  This was one busy day and we are bone tired!!!  I am envious of people who will be enjoying a long holiday weekend, we will be working, working, working!!!! Here are some of the lovely designs created for this weeks weddings, and one of those weddings happened to be today.

Now I am off to bed, tomorrow is a big day for me!! I get to go shopping with our oldest sons fiance, we are looking for a wedding dress. So exciting!!!

Today we delivered wedding flowers to our bride Casey G., everything was so totally gorgeous and thankfully my daughter Hannah got some great photos of today’s designs.

My bride and her maids posed for us in their fabulously floral robes from Etsy. The little burlap ring bearers pillow and the buttoning hook were also found on Etsy.

Note the extreme concentration on my face and how my tongue is hanging out of my mouth as I add a brooch to the brides bouquet.

Perhaps the most adorable sight of the day was the brides new puppy.

The wedding took place at Stone Manor Country Club in Md. and this tent is the reception site.

The designs were presented in vases wrapped in burlap, wooden boxes, or our iron stands and I brought my new iron lanterns.

The altar arrangement were presented on our new wooden altar stands made by my husband Evan.

After delivering todays wedding I started creating bouquet number 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6.

As you can see, we have made some lovely things this week.

Now it’s time to head back to Maryland to clean up from todays wedding. Long, long, long, and productive day!!!

 

The day started bright and early with the graduation of our daughter Hannah. This is our third child to graduate from Loudoun County High School and our last. Due to rezoning the rest of the kids will graduate from Tuscarora High. This made the day extra sad for us because my husband and I both graduated from County!!! It was hard to say goodbye to the school and hard to believe the rest of the kids will not graduate from County. Hannah was our last Loudoun County Girl!!

Notice we left child, 5, 6, and 7 at home. I can’t quite imagine a graduation service with a 6, 4, and 2 year old!!! Lunch at the amazing Tuskies was also far more enjoyable without the littlest Chaplets.

We returned home by midday and I spent a little time in the flower shop getting ready for this weekend. When I arrived I found this amazing lily specimen on my work bench. I don’t know this for sure, but I am guessing that Don the Dahlia man stopped by for a visit!!! It looks like his gardens and his business are seriously growing, I may need to start calling Don my “flower man!”

After a little time back in the studio, it was time to head to the village of Middleburg, where I was speaking on a panel about social media. Thanks to the Loudoun County Dept. of Tourism for asking me to speak, and many thanks to my fellow panelist Scott from Catoctin Creek, Sarah from The National Conference Center, and Stacey from the LCVA.

Now to the part we all are waiting for, lets see what’s “in the cooler.”

I cheated you on images tonight, sorry about that, but I still have the zoom lens on the camera from today’s graduation. I was simply to tired to go switch the lens for tonight’s blog post. Forgive me but we had a big day!!

We have spent months getting ready for this big wedding weekend. Tomorrow our brides Sarah, Casey, and Rachel are all getting married. Each girl is so special to us and we are very excited about June 11th, this date has been the buzz word in the shop for months. I am headed to the Eastern Shore to handle Sarah’s wedding, but as soon as I finish my setup I am headed to Rachel’s wedding and then on to Casey’s barn wedding.  My day today started bright and early with some designs that needed my love and then I was off to Casey’s barn with the design team handling her event. We spent the afternoon, checking, rechecking, and rechecking our props. We also hung, hung, and hung, mercury glass. The barn is so ready for this big wonderful wedding.

We laid out the head table to make sure we had enough designs. We have beautiful coral paper for the top of the wooden boxes and then little mercury glass designs to scatter on the boxes and across the table. We have two elevated designs for this table. Then clusters of coral charm peonies, peach juliet roses, berry, scabiosa, veronica, ranunculus, the list is endless.

Back in the studio large designs were created for Sarah’s wedding. These boxes were made by my wonderful husband Evan, they are 2 feet square and absolutely perfect for our altar designs.

These pieces belong to Rachel, she also has huge purple carnation balls that will be elevated on black stands.

Casey

Rachel

Sarah

I am off to bed, I have a big day ahead of me!!

 

My “in the cooler” posts normally suffer from the fact that I am the photographer. Well, tonight I got mighty lucky, and photographer Vicki Grafton stopped by for a quick visit and we happened to turn some of tomorrows bouquets into a mini photo shoot. Thankfully I have young hot daughters and some graduation or prom dresses hanging around. This first image is of my daughter Abby with a maids bouquet from our Sunday wedding.

This fabulous bouquet belongs to my bride Amanda. Thanks for letting us borrow your bridal bouquet Amanda, we loved getting these pictures of your awesome and amazing bouquet.

This lovely bouquet belongs to my Sat. bride Katie, and if my Sunday bride Katie is looking at this, don’t worry this is not your bouquet!!! Katie on Sat. is crimsons and pinks, Katie on Sunday is peach, creams, and oranges.  I don’t want to cause any panic.

Thank you Vicki for making my “in the cooler” post so freaking pretty, of course my hot daughters help!!

We have so many lovely things “in the cooler” this week, including at least 50 bouts and corsages for my daughters high school prom. Yep, we nailed it again. Thank you flower gods for getting us our lovelies this week.

This is one seriously big and busy weekend!! So big that I thought I would give you two blog posts today, our cooler is “ricking full.” Yes I said ricking, it is a new term that was created today while texting with my friend Laura from Events In The City. I meant to say the bouquet I had just created for her was rocking, but I typed ricking, she thought I meant ridiculous, as in awesome. We agreed, when things are ridiculously rocking, they are ricking. Things are ricking here!! I love this photo of 70 bunches of baby’s breath, or 700 stems of baby’s breath, sitting in the sun.  The dainty white blossoms were placed outside because we needed to get the flowers to open, open, open. We are building a huge arch of baby’s breath tomorrow. Get me ladders, tape, wire, glue, whatever you can find, because this baby’s breath arch has gotta be ricking!!!

These designs are going to Georgetown, we will be adding amazing phalaenopsis orchids into each vase when we arrive at the reception. This type of orchid is to fragile to ride in the vases to the wedding. Boxes of orchids will go with the designers to the event and the orchids will be placed in the centerpieces on the job.

Speak of the devil!!

This is the start of one of our place card designs. Can you tell it is a martini themed design.

Pretty things are everywhere,

and nothing else can fit “in the cooler.”

Night, night!!!

Nigella “love in the mist,” you just gotta LOVE this pretty petal!!!

White hybrid delphinium, available in dark and light blue, lavender, and mauve.

Bachelor Buttons

White stock, available in lavender, rose, and purple.

Happy times for me, my dahlia man Don is growing peonies. So glad I don’t have to wait until July to see my friend!!

Red peonies, red roses, and red tulips are stunning in these red cylinder vases.

We are making such beautiful creations this week!!

We have a strawberry themed farm wedding tomorrow and I literally dug up some of my fathers strawberry plants to create these cute little designs for some of our stations. Thankfully daddy is to busy being a farmer to care or know about the Internet, blogs, and social media, so please don’t tell him I stole his strawberry plants.

Thankfully he did have time to bake us some of his famous pie, which we are happily delivering to the wedding. Strawberry of course!!! My dad owns Heider’s Farm Market and his pie is outrageous!!!

These sweet little designs will hang on shepherds hooks going down the aisle.

This large piece is for the buffet and it will be displayed on an old vintage box.

We will also be providing some seriously amazing hot pink peony designs tomorrow.

This wedding is truly lovely, bright, happy, and so beautiful. We will pair these designs with my silver and crystal stands and it will create a bold, and dramatic look.

We even have a few tropical designs “in the cooler,” these are headed to a wedding at Landsdowne Resort. This was one heck of a busy day and there are lots of stories to tell, but I am headed to bed we have a huge day ahead of us.

I literally found myself moaning and screaming OMG in joy, over today’s bouquets. I have been stressed lately about papers, emails, contracts, voicemail, and bookkeeping, but all is forgotten when I get my precious petals in my hands. This bouquet was created with peach juliet cabbage roses, silver brunia, dusty miller, coral peonies, and we also brought in privet berry, peach ranunculus, scabiosa pods, and asclepsia from one of my  NYC sources. This bouquet has a very loose and organic feel and I loved the design.

The maids bouquets featured cream peonies, peach stock, and free spirit roses. I can’t wait to see the professional photographs from this wedding.

Coral peonies were the special treat in the shop this week and they were used to create two of my bridal’s today.

Here the coral peony was paired with yellow cabbage roses, green hydrangea, yellow freesia, green viburnum, peach ranunculus, yellow billy balls, and peach roses.

Maids will carry smaller versions of the bridal bouquet and we love the wrap of bakers twine that was used to make these stems special.

And this bouquet just made me smile… nothing is more lovely and more bridal than a light pink and white peony bouquet. This bouquet says Spring bride. We also loved attaching great grandmas earrings onto this bouquet.

Maids bouquets were created with pink peony, hot pink roses, pink ranunculus, pink hydrangea, pink sophie roses, and spray roses.

These designs will be elevated on glass stands for one of our weddings. They are loaded in pink peony, cream hydrangea, baroness cabbage roses, larkspur, snapdragons, lily and raunculus.

This was a wonderful week of design and I am certain our brides are going to be very, very, very, happy!!!!!!