Meredith and Jason married last fall and our floral studio Holly Heider Chapple Flowers brought the petals. This wedding was a complete pleasure to be involved with. The lovely ceremony and reception took place at one of my favorite Loudoun wedding venues, Whitehall Manor. The incredible photography was taken by Amelia Johnson and seeing Amelia’s work just makes me giddy. The images from this day are so incredibly lovely. It was an honor to have her capture my work.

Meridith’s bouquet featured white dahalias from Don, and cafe au lait dahlias from Don, sahara roses, bunny tail grasses, and golden amaranthus.

Maids carried bouquets of white hydrangea, pheasant feathers, pods and berry.

Elevated designs featured a mix of the days flowers.

Happy married life Meredith and Jason, I was so happy to be your floral designer.

I have been designing flowers for 20 years. During those 20 years I have been busy raising children and growing a business. Never once did I imagine that this little side job of mine would become a full time job or a career that would support our whole family, and never once did I ever believe that my little flower career would give me good cause to travel.

This is my year of education, of travel, of indulgence, and my year of thanksgiving.  I will always be grateful to Laura from Faith Flowers for creating this trip to Belgium and Holland. It was most certainly time I learned from the masters. I have fallen in love with this place and the people I am meeting. I can promise you when I go to leave here my heart is going to shatter. I am meeting new and remarkable friends, friends I will most certainly not want to leave. Two of those friends are Isabel Gilbert Palmer and Gudrun Cottenier and they are the founders of the Green Academy Of Belgium. I am absolutely loving my time with them.

Our day started bright and early at the gates of  Geert Pattyn beautiful home. Geert has a remarkable studio at the property that was once owned by his parents. The property was at one time a working tobacco farm. All of the buildings have been converted into studio space, living space, or storage space. The property now boasts amazing flowers where tobacco once grew. Many of the gardens were started by Geert’s father. Geert is an amazingly talented designer and I loved his gentle soul. I could truly feel that he was a part of his land and also a part of each piece he designed. Geert most certainly is an artist!!!

Just for fun we walked down the lane to Geert’s house.

Floral art is everywhere on the property. Everything is pruned, manicured, or displayed in a very artistic way.

I love these sisters from Atlanta!!

These frames will soon be full of sweet peas.

Geert

This fabulous building was once used for drying tobacco. In this building Geert displays some of his most clever art projects. If you want to see whats inside I suggest you sign up for this trip next year. I am keeping many of my discoveries top secret!!

A dress made of corn husk. I have seen several of these floral gowns before and I have never cared for any of them. The idea always seems more artistic or odd than beautiful. This gown was everything, artistic, unique, but also truly beautiful. The gown looked like it was created with the the richest of fabrics. This gown was so worthy!!

After a full morning with Geert and another lovely meal, we headed to Gudrun’s house.

This is Gudrun, she is one of our instructors and one of the founders of The Green Academy. This picture was taken yesterday during lunch. I’m finding it really hard to get pictures of our instructors, they are moving about so fast as they diligently take care of us.

Gudruns studio is also attached to her house, this work/live environment is something I totally relate to and most certainly appreciate.

This is Haruko and Isabel. Haruko is a Japanese/Belgian designer and she was our instructor for the afternoon class.  Isabel is the other founder of The Green Academemy.

There were hundreds of non floral elements for us to design with and I am keeping all of those top secret as well. Don’t worry Chapel Designers I will share them with you in our secret forum!!!

Here are those sisters again!!!

This is the structure I made for my bouquet. If you want to know how to do this…. come to Belgium and visit with The Green Academy, Faith Flowers will be happy to bring you!!!

Making this design today and spending time creating, was incredible. I can’t believe how much I have learned in just one day. I am in awe with all of the new things I have learned, my brides are going to be very happy I invested in Holly Heider Chapple Flowers.

Another lovely design and a very lovely lady.

The night ended with more fine dinning at the very lovely restaurant Auberge du Pecheur in Sint- Martens-Latem.

Pretty impressive day!! Now I’m off to bed, I have to be up in 5 hours to hit the floral supply wholesalers. I am going to lose it there!!!!

I am doing a lot of work to get prepared for this wedding season and it’s grueling. I work really hard, seriously, if I had known that it would be this hard to be a business owner of a floral design studio, I may have attempted another career. I truly fell into this career with the belief that it would be, oh so much fun to play with flowers. I could not conceive in my earlier days how big this business could or would become, and I most certainly did not ever believe I would be managing designers, blogging, emailing, and handling social media. Its been 20 years since I invented this career and things have most certainly changed. With all of this work and responsibility, I am so thankful for those moments when I am truly creating something out of my passion. I love how a design flows out of me, how my intuitive placement causes me to sigh or moan. I love when I find myself doing the happy dance because I have gotten my design just right. It sounds silly I’m sure, but that’s really what it’s like when I get a piece right, it’s a very enriching feeling. This feeling of joy is only matched when the images come in. YES!!!!!!! I love seeing my pretty things beautifully captured.

Recently I had the pleasure of working on a fabulous shoot. The images were photographed by Katie Stoops and the shoot was designed by the girls from Events In The City.  The pictures truly brought tears to my eyes.  When I see my work in photos, I realize I am good at this, I really am, and today I am super proud of that. There are days when all of the hard work is so worth it!!! So although I will I spend the rest of the day selling, contracting, emailing, blogging, and fighting for the blooms that I need for this weekends weddings, I am happy, content, and pleased with this beautiful work!!

I am currently obsessed with flower head pieces so creating this was very exciting, getting the photo was even better!!

Splendid

Clever

Stately

Yummy!!

Details

Love

My favorite light pink cabbage rose!!

Many thanks to the following artists that volunteered their time and artistic abilities to bring this beautiful story board to life. Being involved with something so beautiful always makes my heart sing!!

Photographer: Katie Stoops Photography
Event Designer: Events in the city
Venue: The Goodstone Inn
Makeup: Natalie Gordon of Avenue 42
Hair: Hair by Giselle
Cake: Macaroons by OCakes
Dress Designer: Monique Lhuillier from Carine’s Bridal in DC
Garter Girl: The Garter Girl
Flowers: Holly Heider Chapple
Shoe Designer: Steve Madden
Stationery: Paperzest
Veil or Hair Accessories: Carine’s Bridal in DC
Prop or Furniture Rentals: DC Rental
Rentals: white couch & vintage pink velvet chair Rust Vintage Rentals
Calligraphy: Meant To Be Calligraphy
Dress stylist: Gabriella Lehimdjian from Carine’s Bridal in DC

As you can see the trip to NYC was amazing, but our experience at The Flower School of NY  was beyond anything I could have imagined. As you know I spend most of time designing in my home based studio. Each time I create it’s to please a client and I am always the leader in the studio, which means I am answering hundreds of questions whenever I am designing. Being in the beautiful flower shop, designing for the sheer pleasure of designing, and asking questions was an enjoyable and relaxing experience. Although the Flower School offers many different celebrity designers as teachers this particular class was instructed by Ariella Chezar.  This was the first class I have ever taken in my life. It was wonderful to be there in the moment, learning something new. Ariella was a complete delight, her calming attitude and nature was a pleasure to behold. I would certainly love to have someone as calm as Ariella in our studio on a crazy Friday afternoon. If you follow Martha Stewart Weddings you know that Ariella’s creations often grace the pages of that iconic magazine. In fact Ariella is one of the most published floral designers that I follow.

I took two classes on that Weds. The morning class was all about the hand tied bouquet.

As you can see Ariella is full of life and light and she is as pretty as her posies.  She has a super awesome energy, our family would call it good jou jou.

Laura Williams Loda Floral Design

Alex Jusino Exquisite Weddings

Morgan from Petals and Hedges

Lesley Frascogna from Tulip Floral

Janice Wong, Precious Pear

 

Lisa Sommer, from Petals and Promises.

Hey that’s me, Holly Chapple

Here is my awesome Ariella inspired bouquet. I loved this bouquet so much that I brought it home with me in my suitcase!!

Wait until you see the images from the compote class!!!! Many thanks to photographer Vicki Grafton, your pictures of this class rock!!!

Its 7:13 a.m., and I am home after my trip to NYC with the Chapel Designers. I have packed school lunches, the wholesaler arrived just seconds ago with flowers, and so life begins again. In my heart, I am overwhelmed with a richness and fullness from this trip. I am so honored and encouraged that so many designers from across the country took this chance to “meet me in NYC.” I have the spirit, the energy, and the desire to continue on because of all of the designers I met. On several occasions I was called the “flower mama”; if this is the next phase of my life, I will take it. There were so many moments about this trip that were surreal, and in these particular moments, I would experience an overwhelming feeling of gratitude I have never experienced before in my career. Here are the things that I will cherish forever. Greeting the designers for the first time at the door of Matthew Robbins, realizing that so many had come because they trusted and believed in me and in themselves (faith works!!). Loving on each designer and meeting them for the first time or seeing my old friends filled me up from my nose to my toes. Looking around the beautiful design studio of Matthew Robbins and seeing what can be born from the designing of flowers was so inspiring. Matthew’s kindness is so memorable because there is a warmth in his studio that cannot be fabricated; it comes from the real people working in this space, as Matthew and his staff are indeed very gentle and kind.

Seeing Evan in the crowd everywhere I went was a new and exciting experience; his belief in me, in us, and the Chapel designers was awesome, and his presence made me realize that we really are a team now.

On Monday morning when I walked quietly into the conference room, I stood there all alone and I nearly wept. I remembered so clearly asking to see the conference room of the hotel last year just before we left the hotel to go home. I dared in that moment to believe that we would return and fill that conference room (faith works!!).

Spending the day with the savvy and very spunky Tara Guerard simply took me back to 3 years ago when I first heard her speak. I am so proud of how far I have come in 3 years. Thank you Wedding 360 for hosting me in San Francisco, you most certainly started a desire in me to learn and to teach.

The excitement and gratitude I feel when I see my friend David Beahm is always a surreal experience. I know I can trust him and I am always thankful for him. His candid and very honest lecture that he gave the designers was poetic and powerful. I believe in David and all that he stands for. Listen to your gut!!!

Spending time with my friends and the flowers was a true joy!! Finally meeting my cute sales representative Niv was really fun!!

Walking through the doors of Martha Stewart’s offices is a joy, a honor and a pleasure that will always make me feel giddy. Meeting Shira the Real Weddings editor for Martha Stewart was also a true pleasure, and I nearly died in the props closet. There were so many beautiful china patterns, vintage containers, cake stands, and yummy things I am longing for now. Our afternoon lecture when I stood in front of all my Chapel Designers will always be special to me, but in truth I was so tired at this point, I can barely remember a thing I said. I loved seeing Isha and Jenn share from their hearts, and hearing Daevid speak started new sparks for my business as well. Spending time on the rooftop of the hotel or in restaurants, loving each young and oh-so-sweet new little designer, or marveling at those designers that found the desire to begin careers with flowers later in life. I found many role models on this trip. Strolling the flower market and seeing what I so whole-heartedly love makes me so certain that I do what is inherently my passion. Being recognized in the flower market by a customer as Holly Chapple of The Full Bouquet Blog also absolutely thrilled the heck out of me; it shouldn’t, but it did!! Time with Ariella Chezar was intoxicating; being taught for the first time ever in my career and understanding that I have a true passion, and a thirst for more of this career was also enriching. I honestly stood there with beautiful flowers in my hand watching the most lovely lady design, and I felt high and completely relaxed. It was a fulfilling experience no drugs or alcohol could ever create. The beauty and simplicity of the Flower School of NY made me long for a little shop, but knowing that is not in my future I enjoyed my time there and I made a commitment and a promise to myself to return to the school to study again. Our lovely lunch at La Grenouille made me feel like a lady–not a mommy, or a worker bee, but a lady. In this amazing restaurant, where fresh flowers play an important and necessary role in the experience, I was blown away by perfect china, perfect service, perfect and totally fresh foods and flowers. My heart soared here!!! I have so many other moments and experiences that I will share as I continue to post about our trip but for now it’s back to work. We have two weddings this weekend, a bridal show, and a photo shoot.  This will be my year of education, my year to learn, my year to learn how to be a teacher!!! I have many more pictures and several more posts to write but this was one heck of a start!!

It’s now 4:06 in the afternoon and I can finally post this entry. My morning got terribly interrupted and before I knew it I was meeting with clients, suffered some heartache, and all of the pretty flowers I chose by hand yesterday at market were shipped to another designer in the Hamptons. We go from loving it, to OMGding it in minutes around here. I can only “walk in faith” or believe that “faith works” because I have the Chapel designers!!!

6 months ago my husband Evan left his corporate job of 20 years and joined the Holly Heider Chapple Flowers team. This new phase of our lives has been amazing, wonderful, and enlightening. My-our business is really changing and for the better. Evan is very practical and meticulous and serious about responsiveness and organization. Brides and mothers are constantly commenting on how quick we are to reply and how helpful and wonderful Evan is. Prior to Evan being here answering emails was a true chore. Evan’s help here allows me to focus on design and the relationships I am developing with my brides and others in the wedding industry. His management of the business has been very freeing for me and now I take time to actually study my trade. Over the last six months we completed yet another record breaking year, added new props into our inventory, started a lighting and drape division of our company, did considerable construction on our home and flower shop, and in a few short weeks I will be traveling to New York City and then in April I will be going to Holland and Belgium to study floral design. I thought it would be annoying to have a boss ( or someone watching over me) but I am really enjoying sharing all of this responsibility. I appreciate the way he can get my artistic head out of the clouds and how he can make me focus. I am enjoying having Evan tell me what to do and I of course only listen if I feel like it!! I mean really, how much do I have to listen to him?

Just yesterday new soil arrived for the additional gardens Evan will create this year, this fresh rich soil is symbolic of all the growth around here. We are working on some really big projects and dreaming up some really big dreams. Today we even had a media crew here for a potential story and my good friend Genevieve Leiper came over to take our first professional head shots together.  Many thanks to Genevieve for capturing us today. Evan is also sporting his brand new designer hairdo and he is happily calling himself  “the big bad bald dad.”  This six months has flown by!!!

Wish us luck as we keep growing, changing, learning, and designing!!

Last summer we put our “serious design on” when we worked on Rachel and Matt’s wedding. Rachel and Matt were hosting their wedding at the very traditional venue the Rust Sanctuary, however our couple was all about rock n roll and their biker friends. The colors of the day were to be hot pink, black, and white, but with a garden twist.  To add a little extra tension or stress to our design challenge, our bride works for a very famous and traditional interior decorator. Decor needed to reflect the couples interests and style but also still be pretty and appropriate for a wedding. This wedding was extremely special to our studio because Evan did all of the lighting and decor in the tent. Just three short weeks after putting his “design on,” Evan quit his job and joined Holly Heider Chapple Flowers full time, I guess he enjoys designer challenges.

The bridal bouquet was created with hot pink cabbage roses, sea star fern, fiddle head ferns, freeze dried roses in black, hot pink nerine lily, italian ruscus painted black, and black scabiosa. This was a stunning bouquet, edgy, fun, a little bit rocker and a little bit gardeny.

Matt’s bout was designed with hot pink roses, black scabiosa, fiddle head fern, and black wire.

The bride and her mother made the above flowers for the seating charts, and a grandmother harvested native Virginia trees like dogwoods, and red buds to be given to guests as favors.

Our wedding arch was a masterpiece. We used massive amounts of  willow in a very unruly fashion to add a little bit of wickedness and “untamedness” to our arch. The design was also created with roses flying up one side of the arch, and hydrangea and babys breath crawling up the back right side of the design. Giving it a very unexpected and sexy look!!

Maids carried bouquets of hot pink roses, smart weed, sea star fern, and a collar of baby’s breath.

The vase for the place card table was built by Evan, but my daughter Hannah sketched it by hand to match the couples invitations. I swear to you it was a direct match!!

Here comes Evan…

Evans hanging lanterns and up-lighting were amazing, so amazing that the groom said he felt like he was walking into a scene from a movie.

This wedding was really exciting to create and I am so grateful we got to be a part of this wedding. Happy married life Rachel and Matt!!!

Many thanks to photographer Roman Grinev for sending us these fabulous pictures!!

Mary Katherine and Mike married this past fall at one of my favorite venues, Murray Hill, this was a gorgeous Loudoun Wedding. The wedding was designed and styled by my friend Vicki Grafton of My Simple Details, you will see she provided the perfect wine themed event for our clients. The wedding was photographed by photographer Tara Welch and Vicki Grafton was also the second shooter on this wedding. We at Holly Heider Chapple Flowers created the beautiful sunflower designs, and my husband superstar Evan hung the lighting in the tent. This wedding is so pretty and so fresh. The beauty of the sunflower is often underestimated, I did of course add a few specialty varieties of this bloom to make things fun!!!

Vicki envisioned using these wine racks for the altar flowers and it’s one of the most creative ideas I have seen. This was a stunning ceremony site. In addition to the wine theme, the theme of MK2 was also present throughout the wedding due to the fact that the couple shared the same initials. This wedding was also featured on the Style Me Pretty Blog and more details from this wedding can be seen here. We love when our work is featured with SMP, it’s quite the honor!!

A sunflower bud, nigella, solidago, and blue delphinium were used to design the grooms bout.

The bridal bouquet was created with teddy bear sunflowers, regular sunflowers, solidago, blue nigella, blue delphinium, blue veronica, seeded euc, and antique blue green hydrangea. This bouquet was a real beauty!!!

The cocktail hour had so many details I could stare at the pictures all day!!!

Centerpieces were created in wine boxes and the look was perfect.  We even took the time to wrap cork around some of the vases this made the designs so unique.

Do you see Evan’s pretty lanterns hanging from the tent???

Happy married life Mary Katherine and Mike, this wedding was a beauty!!! I am so glad I got to be your sunflower girl!!!

Chelsea and Damien married this past November at the Westin in Georgetown. Their orange, purple, and white wedding flowers were designed by our studio Holly Heider Chapple Flowers.  The photographs from this wedding were taken by photographer Theresa Choi. This is the second time I have had the pleasure of working with Theresa and each time I have been enthralled with her work.

In truth the colors of this wedding were dark, dark, orange and dark, dark, purple, mixed with white. The dark tones were the operative words, we were not using any medium toned purples or oranges for this wedding and certainly no lavender or peach. I was in all honesty terrified to make this bridal bouquet. I combine orange and purple flowers together all of the time, but I am rarely asked to add in the white. Had the purples and oranges been softer shades the transition to white would have been easier. Dark dark purple mixed with white can look as harsh as black to white. I knew when I started designing I would have to be careful about how I transitioned from the dark purples to the whites. Hesitantly I started to create Chelsea’s bouquet, as I started to design I think I had divine intervention from the flower gods. I somehow started a pattern of color blocking and as it came together all of my fears diminished and I was squealing with delight. The very bouquet that I was afraid to design became one of my favorite creations of the year. Getting all of these designs perfect was really important to me, I adored this bride and the brides mother. Thankfully the clients had given me some creative freedom to bring their designs to life. When asked, they allowed me to add dusty miller and silver brunia into the designs, and this helped with the transition in color. The grey gave me some medium tones to work with. I can’t even begin to tell you how proud I am of this bouquet and how thankful I am that Theresa captured Chelsea’s beautiful bouquet so perfectly.

Love these first look images!!

Full lush centerpieces were created with dark purple stock, dark purple carnations, purple anemones, orange roses, purple orchids, white hydrangea, silver brunia, dusty miller, and white roses.

The truly extraordinary cake was designed by Maggie Austin and many thanks also to the planning firm Kelley Cannon Events for their perfect execution of this event.

Guests clearly enjoyed the photo booth!!

Happy married life Chelsea and Damien. Thank you for allowing me this chance to design for you. Many thanks also to MOB for truly being a delight and for letting me be a part of your daughters big day. Your tears of delight over our flowers will always be remembered and appreciated.

day of coordination : Kelley Cannon Events

photographer : Theresa Choi

hair : Rachel Corey

makeup : Ryan Krasney

florist : Holly Heider Chapple Flowers

ceremony/reception : The Westin Georgetown

dj : Chris Laich

cake : Maggie Austin Cake

photobooth : NOVA Photo Booth

second photographer : Muriel Silva

Caitlin and Shea married this past fall at the truly beautiful Rust Sanctuary. which is a Loudoun Wedding venue. Beautiful all white flowers were created by our floral design studio Holly Heider Chapple Flowers.  The event was perfectly photographed by the extraordinaire Kate Headley, and meticulously designed and planned by Jessica Brown of Simply Chic Events.   The wedding was also featured in the new online magazine, Reverie Magazine.

The bride was photographed in historic downtown Waterford, Virginia, and the images are truly delightful.

The bridal bouquet was created with white hydrangea, white freesia, white stock, white cabbage roses, white ranunculus, white patience cabbage roses, white fringed tulips, white parrot tulips, and green hypericum berry. This bouquet was such a pleasure to create. Caitlin truly helped me co-design this bouquet and actually all of the flowers as she had a very specific look that she was hoping to achieve. Knowing that we had created Caitlin’s dream designs was very graitfying. The whole wedding was very lovingly and thoroughly thought out. Caitlin’s mom gathered all of the apothecary jars and unique vases for the head tables, and her father made the most beautiful teacup votives, these were used to create an entrance into the reception.

I remember the first day I met Caitlin and I remember how badly I wanted to be her floral designer. This wedding was awesome!! Happy married life Caitlin and Shea!!!

P.S. I am glad we did not use the sticky green tape on your bouquet!!!!