Last Saturday my day started bright and early with an 8a.m. wedding delivery to the Belmont Country Club. This wedding was all about fall flowers and everything was super beautiful. I then headed to DC to deliver flowers at the Mayflower Hotel. We designed 24 glorious and amazing centerpieces for this wedding and lots of personal flowers. After a lovely visit with my bride, I headed to 101 Constitution to check on a wedding we were doing there. We hung blue bottles full of white flowers from the top of a tent ceiling, we also displayed bright white and clean designs in blue vases and vintage blue bottles and I also designed a bridal bouquet on a vintage fan from the 1800’s. Seriously amazing and special. Once that wedding was under control I headed back to Leesburg to work on an additional HCF wedding. Here we did elevated designs, lovely low centerpieces in vintage containers several pieces for the arbor and a seriously cool place card display that involved hundreds of apples. We also had a team designing at the Morais Vineyard, those pieces were rich, lush, and elegant.  Each one of those designs was touched and loved by me as well. On Sunday I got up finalized the order for our Sunday wedding at Rosemont Manor and then I dashed to NYC.

My life is so funny and amazingly full and often really hard to believe. On Sunday morning I was standing in my house discussing the massacre that happened in our hen house. Unfortunately a weasel got all of our girls, seriously ever single hen was killed, reminding me that nature can be so cruel. Four and half hours later I was coming up an escalator in Penn Station into the middle of NYC. Because I spent so many years staying home with my children and growing my business, I will never get used to the amazing opportunities that are coming my way. I truly hope that I never lose the sense of wonder I feel when I travel, and when I experience new things.  I also hope I never take visits to NYC for granted.

My purpose in coming to NYC was to watch and to help designer David Beahm create the florals and decor for The Knot gala. Spending the day with David Beahm, Chrstoper Confero, Joseph Massie, George, and Robert was incredible. Each of these designers was so super talented and everyone was so sweet to me. I loved being the only flower mama in the group. These guys were awesome and very inspiring!!

We began our day at 8a.m. at The New York City library  we needed to get our designs started before the library opened to the public. At 10 a.m. when tourists began to arrive at the venue our design space got mighty small. The area we were working in got roped off to protect our flowers and the tourists. Seeing an installation in this venue was one of the many reasons why I wanted to help. This venue has been featured in many movies and working here was seriously cool.  David created a huge tree and from that tree you could see hundreds of butterflies flying into the air. The tree was a beautiful teal and purple tone. Davids team painted all of the branches to get the otherwise green leaves to become the chosen color palette.

We added hundreds of blue and purple hydrangea blooms to the branches of the tree, this gave the tree an amazing look.

Then strings of butterflies were tied to the tree and huge balloons were used to fly the butterflies into the air. I literally was in awe when I saw the butterflies take flight. This was the first time I had seen a flying flower arrangement. Can I say … KICK ASS!!!

The tree, when complete was so large that the band actually preformed underneath the tree. Talk about a big flower arrangement.

After spending some delightful time at The Knot Gala, we headed to the Martha Stewart Weddings market party. You can bet I almost died when I realized I would get to attend both of these events.

Preston Bailey, and Darcy Miller.

The DJ preformed behind the biggest ice sculpture I have ever seen.

Beautiful wedding cakes were on display throughout the event and guests could even get their nails done.

After meeting many of the NYC wedding celebs we headed back to The Knot to close out the night.

Carley Rooney founder of The Knot and NYC designer David Beahm.

The New York City Library the night of the event.

A million thanks to David Beahm for taking the time to teach me a bit about designing in NYC. In addition to the design time David introduced me to all of the major designers in New York. I met Preston Bailey, Darcy Miller, Marcy Blum, Randy Fenoli, Anne Barge, Carley Rooney, Bryan Rafanelli, and countless other wedding industry celebrities. The night ended with a fun little dinner that included David, Christina Matteuchi of David Beahm Design, Ed Libby, and Christoper Confero. I am always thoroughly impressed and pleasantly surprised by David’s remarkable and genuine kindness!!!

In less than two full days I was back home in Virginia attending Eli’s last flag football game of the season. Today started like this….

Here we go again!!!