As most of the nation is preparing for Sandy, I am recovering from the biggest wedding weekend in our history and I am basking in the glory of a very successful weekend for Holly Heider Chapple Flowers. You know the song “I get by with the help of my friends,” It was a constant refrain ringing in my ears all last week. Thank goodness for my designer friends who came to my rescue last week as our studio prepared and designed flowers for 7 weddings. Here is the clincher all 7 weddings were in the same day. I must thank Jennifer Ederer of Modern Day Floral from Grand Rapids Michigan, Trish Van De Merkt from Chicago and owner of Grapevine Floral and Isha Foss of Isha Foss Events from Chesapeake for coming to my aid. I can always find more hands to help around here, but I needed designers here with the same operating ethics and standards that I have. My friends were amazing and because of them our studio truly pulled off a miracle.  I am honestly not quite sure what in the heck I was thinking when I decided to try and produce 7 weddings in one day but I have this incredible belief that this studio can do anything. I also believe fully in the people that work here and the allies I have across this country. This belief and my inability to say no has really caused this studio to grow and my absolute adamant insistence that quality will not suffer has kept my brides happy. I am grateful beyond belief that we pulled this off and I am also certain I will never try this again.

For many years now I have been trying to decide the future of this studio. I have been on a quest trying to determine what is right for Holly Chapple Flowers and for our family. Being bigger, doing more, seems like the obvious choice for any successful business, but it’s the wrong choice for us. If this business were to grow any bigger I would have to leave our home based studio, I would need a warehouse, I would need to let go of obsessing over each design, and it would be common to have seven weddings a weekend. No thanks, I am staying here and we are going to focus on this… our family, the relationships I have developed with other designers across this country, our gardens, and teaching. We will of course still be doing weddings but we will be doing less of them. I am so proud of us and our many accomplishments but its time to enjoy the life I have created and the art I adore!! Here are a few pictures from this weekend and the amazing time I have shared with the incredible designer friends that came to help me this weekend.

Jenn from Modern Day Floral

Late night chats this week have been incredible, these ladies are seriously helping me to redefine Holly Chapple Flowers.

Bouquets 1-7 plus a pile of Holly which is my signature leaf that I add to all of my bouquets.

To ensure that each wedding was perfectly serviced we created 7 separate design teams. Each team had only one focus and that is why we were successful. My friend Isha says I actually dusted each team with some “Holly Love, fairy dust.”  The teams headed out to DC, almost West VA., 2 in Maryland, and 3 in Va.

Here I am designing out the back of a van in Maryland.

Even my teenager Riley helped on this wedding.

This wedding was super sexy and featured our new crystal stands. Evan and Trish managed this event.

Here is the only shot I have of our DC wedding.

We were in love with the baby’s breath balls we created for this wedding. Pictures from this sweet wedding can also be seen on Sam Hurds blog.  All in all I was a little busy this past weekend so I don’t have many images to share but trust me we killed it. When we finished the events we also got the kids to the Halloween carnival at school. It was most certainly another full day, at the full bouquet. Jennifer managed this event with Ashley.

I will never forget this incredible week and all of the things I have learned. I will also be grateful for the new certainty I have for our future.

After all the designing was done we had time to hit a few of the antique stores and do a bit of shopping. Leesburg will never be the same.

I am super happy, content, and fulfilled right now.  My friends are all still with me, and we are going to ride out one more storm. I bet Sandy will be way more scary then our weddings!!!