I did the mega happy dance when I found these adorable little vials at Crate & Barrel. I absolutely love the way these little designs turned out. The vial is about four inches tall and held a significant amount of blooms. They will be so fun to use on my farm weddings this weekend. I find the best props for my weddings when I turn my back on the standard florist supply sources.

These incredible glass candlesticks were purchased at Kohl’s and I nearly flipped out when I found them. They work perfectly for a small flower arrangement or they can be used for a floating candle. They can be used with vintage or contemporary designs so I totally love them. If you see any at your local Kohl’s buy them for me and I will pay you back!!!!!!!!

Most of this design is top secret until Sept. but I was dying to show you the hammered chrome votive cups and trays I found at Walmart, yes freaking Walmart. Gotta keep your eyes open when you are shopping props for weddings.

And a huge round of applause to Target for providing me with my enormous black planter and this fabulous copper vase.

This past Sat. we provided flowers to a wedding in DC, Tyson’s Corner, and in Leesburg. We also designed flowers for our past bride Lauren, a big congrats to this special bride because she is expecting her first baby in just a few weeks. In addition we also got to make these very fun designs for our flower shop girl Casey.  While all of this was happening my wonderful and oldest son was graduating with a masters at VA. Tech. Believe it or not we pulled it all off beautifully and I am so thankful to all of the flower shop team.

Here are some fun pictures from Casey’s shower.

We used these vintage enamel tea pots that I gathered from the German Store in downtown Leesburg. The pots were filled with orange tulips, orange roses, orange spray roses, blue thistle, blue delphinium, and baby’s breath.

Vintage blue and white plates were gathered from local antique stores and this made the table look so lovely.

These fun little tags were used on all of the drinks and as place cards. The family found these at Michael’s and I loved them.

Ivy plants were given in honor of Casey’s Gramps. This little detail caused quite the emotional stir, but it was my favorite detail. I love planting things in honor of special events or special people. This was beautiful.

Casey has 5 sisters and they all helped prepare the amazing luncheon.

This was a beautiful day with beautiful family and friends. Casey is a lucky girl, and her wedding day is almost here!!!

Photography by my amazing daughter Hannah Chapple!!!!!

Katie and Mike married last Summer at Woodend Sanctuary. This wedding was so lovely, soft, and romantic. Many thanks to the amazing Kate Headley who photographed the day.

Katie carried an all white bouquet of cabbage roses, white ranunculus, white spray roses, white lizzy, and white stock. The look was stunning and matched her gown perfectly.

Peach, pink, and cream flowers were used for the flower girls, maids, altar pieces, and centerpieces. This look was so fabulous. Designer Ashley Summers from Table 6 Productions styled and planned the wedding.

My vintage milk glass was used for the centerpieces and the style was totally in keeping with the look of the wedding.

Elevated designs were placed on iron bird bathes also perfect for Woodend Sanctuary , which is maintained by the Audubon Society.

A truly perfect wedding, one that was a delight to create. Many thanks to all of the vendors involved and many thanks to Katie & Mike. Thank you for letting me design your flowers.

We have a busy week ahead of us with the potential launch of our new blog, the 86th running of the VA. Gold Cup and one very special bride.  We will be designing, designing, designing. I wanted to quickly show you some of last weeks creations. First up, the rehearsal dinner flowers for one of our events. They were so lovely!!

This event had a really unique and wonderful theme, but I am keeping it a secret until it's big release!

I made this lovely bouquet as an extra bridal bouquet for our Friday bride. I simply could not resist these tree peonies growing in my garden. Once I had finished the design we feared that the huge pollen area of the tree peony could potentially mess up my brides Monique Lhuillier gown. Being always diligent we decided to literally seal in the pollen. We used a paper funnel and spray on acrylic and the pollen could not budge. I loved this bouquet so much I just had to create it. Casey and Miriam got to do the doctor work of adhering the spray.

Our first wedding of the weekend was at the Sunset Room at the National Harbour.

Our bride and groom married on this pier. Photographer Abby Jiu was there to capture the day and I will share the real images from this event very soon. I loved this bride and her mom, we had so much fun designing their wedding. It was also a pleasure to work with Design Cuisine, Chris Laich, and Frost Lighting.

The Place card design.

We designed with 3 different types of centerpieces our first design was a square glass cube. All of the centerpieces featured viburnum from my garden, purple carnations, stock, baroness cabbage roses, tulips, and spay roses. Orchids were added to our taller designs.

Half of the elevated designs were in pilsner vases and half of the designs featured manzanita branches with hanging votives. This was a beautiful wedding.

Saturday's wedding was at Strong Mansion in Dickerson MD. This is such a beautiful wedding location, possibly one of the prettiest views and reflecting pools I have seen.

The ceremony is in front of the reflecting pool. The bride can walk out of the woods or come down the aisle.

I was able to capture this image of the bride and groom right after their "first look."

The bridal bouquet was created with deep red peony, purple hyacinthus, purple phlox, astrantia, blue privet berry, aggies, lavender lilac, purple anemones, and deep purple vandas.  A vintage brooch was pinned onto the bouquet.

A pink peony bud with black privet berry was used for the grooms bout.

Maids carried bouquets that consisted of all the flowers of the day.

Each table featured either our crystal stands, glass votive holders, mercury glass, or vintage glass containers.

Our place card table was to die for…

and the cake was simply stunning.

We may be blogging a little less this week but we will be here working, working, working!!

HC

Some of our most favorite weddings from last year have been hidden under lock and key. Tricia and Jason’s wedding was one of those events. Yesterday the wedding was featured on Style Me Pretty and can be seen here. From the moment event planner & designer Allison Jackson of Pineapple Productions told me about this event, I knew it would be special. Every element and detail was handled flawlessly by Allison and with photographer Anne Robert to capture the day we were rewarded ten fold for all of our hard work and planning.

Guests and wedding party wove through the vines to make it to the aisle on time.

The bride and groom exhanged vows on the top of a hill at Sharp Rock Vineyard in Sperryville. The mountain veiws were amazing.

I love this image of Tricia with her dad. Tricia carried a bouquet of green button mums, orange callas, orange dahlias, and several shades of roses.

Tricia and Jason in the vineyard.

Tricia and Jason with a goat, yes a goat. When Anne sent me the first images, my first question was ” where did the goat come from?’ Being a very clever photographer she found and borrowed the goat. Such a fun shot.

I loved creating this piece with dahlias from the amazing Don. This design welcomed guests on the lemonade table and was later used during the cocktail hour.

This fabulous Ikat fabric was the featured pattern of the day. It was used to create boards to display the place cards, pillows for lounging areas, and custom table runners.

Perfect right? My vintage milk glass vases were used for the centerpieces with popping bright orange flowers.

Every element about this wedding was so much fun and comfortable.

Perhaps my favorite image of the day, our beautiful bride.

Please make sure you visit our post on Style Me Pretty, you will be able to see more images from the day. Anne’s work is amazing and you won’t want to miss a single photograph. Many thanks to Allison for designing such an incredible event. This wedding is one we can all be proud of. It was an honor to provide the flowers for this special day.

Wow, Wow, Wow, is what I thought when I saw the first images from Katie and Aaron’s wedding. Actually I was thinking Wow, from the moment I met this bride.  Katie came to her first consult with her sister and during that time the girls gently unwrapped two of the most lovely hat pins I have ever seen. The pins were enormous as far as hat pins go, the length of the pin was as long as most of my bouquets and the pin itself was like a huge vintage brooch.  Both girls looked at me and said ” do you think you can do something with these?”  At that moment Katie became my hat pin bride, and we had a theme. The pins belonged to Aunt Mary, who was clearly one seriously stylish lady and all of her lovely antiques became a part of the wedding. As our conversation developed we dreamed of centerpieces in vintage containers and even a place card display of vintage brooches. The girls headed back to look through the boxes of aunt Mary’s treasures and I dreamed of doing the flowers for my hat pin bride.

I used silver brunia, dusty miller, anemones in purple and hot pink, cabbage roses, seeded euc, blue thistle, blue privet berry, and ranunculus in the bouquet and of course one silver hat pin.

The brides sister carried the second hat pin.

The wedding took place at a church and then the reception followed at the Hillsborough vineyard. I am going to show you every picture I have, because they are all so amazing. Kristen Gardner did an incredible job capturing this wonderful Loudoun wedding. I am so excited about having these images, seriously these photos are outrageous.

My bride is perfect, awesome, stunning…

and she is super cute also.

We gave the couple our “Hollyish” boutonnieres, this is what we call our bouts when we take it up a notch and create mini pieces of floral art.

My next favorite detail of the night was our brooch place card display. We gathered up Aunt Mary’s brooches and vintage lace to decorate the seating card display. I could kiss Kristen Gardner for getting me these images. I am so excited about sharing this with you.

In addition to Mary’s brooches we bought smaller pins in NYC to help decorate our “hat pin brides” place card board.

The reception room featured lace table runners and crystal bowls from Aunt Mary. I filled in just a few gaps from my own personal antique collection.

Perfectly fabulous right? Recipe: a wonderful and loving couple, a bit of family history to make everything sentimental, an awesome venue, beautiful flowers, and an incredible photographer to record the day. This Loudoun Wedding is a true beauty.

HC

We are certainly starting the season off right with some really fun and unique concepts. I always find us doing things that normal florists would never find time to do. Today we designed with Aunt Mary's hat pins, her vintage brooches, and her old lace tableclothes. We also designed in an old overnight bag, and in our amazing decoupaged vases. Yep, our cooler is rocking tonight.

Above is the maid of honors bouquet for one of our weddings. Only the bride and maid of honor get one of aunt Mary's hat pins, and let me tell you aunt Mary must have been one stylish lady, because I have never seen hat pins like this. The pin itself was almost a foot long she must have been wearing one serious hat.

Here is the bridal bouquet, and I know my bride is taking a peek right this minute. BTW it's so much better in person, you are going to love your bouquet. Can you see the little peice of rosemary poking out of the bouquet? Rosemary is used in remembrance, it is one of my favorite little things to do.

We also used a combination of mine and aunt mary's crystal bowls.

Pretty, pretty, corsages…

and our place card display was made with vintage brooches. Yes we are more than happy with the look of this wedding.

We even used cherry blossoms to create the altar arrangements.

Our orange weddings is a bright and happy wedding and we will be taking this to DC.

This bouquet was created with orange ranunculus, cream de la cream roses, combo roses, orange spray roses, green hypericum berry, green viburnum, white cabbage roses, white ranunculus, and mini green hydangea. Amazing!!!

We love our decoupaged vases.

Daffodils from my garden.

We had a great and successful day and we even slipped in two new clients. We did awesome this week!!

HC

 

Happily for me my brides are sending in pictures from their weddings last year. Hallelujah because I love, love, love, having pictures of my work. Especially this time of year as I am looking through my pictures with client after client. Thanks to photographer Len Spoden for capturing Sarah and Jason's Whitehall Manor wedding, this past June. Loudoun weddings are always amazing this time of year.

The brides bouquet was created with pink peony, pale pink sophie roses, candy bianca roses and antique green hydrangea.

Maids carried bouquets of white carnations, white hydrangea from my garden, dusty miller, green hypericum berry, white phlox, and white limonium.

Small jars of honey were given to guests as favors.

Half of the centerpieces were designed on vintage glass cake plates. We used snapdragons, ferns, peony, spray roses, roses, larkspur, berry, and fillers from my garden to create these lovely arrangements.

The other half of the centerpieces were arranged on my white iron stands. This elevated half of the centerpieces and that really made the reception room feel festive.

Happy married life Sarah and Jason. I am so glad I got to do your wedding flowers.

Just for fun I created these stunning bouquets. It is always a pleasure to create for creations sake. The first bouquet was designed with coral charm peonies, dusty miller, and silver brunia.

My calla lily bouquet was created with 22 stems of white mini callas and sexy black feathers. I used a vintage brooch from my antique jewelry collection. This bouquet is contemporary, sleek, and stylish.

Black privet berries were used to add a touch of drama to this classic garden bouquet. The flowers used were white hydrangea, white hybrid delphinium, white gooseneck, and white anemone. Green seeded eucalyptus was used to loosen up the bouquet.

Hope you loved some of our latest designs!!!

Genevieve Leiper was the photographer that so perfectly captured our work!

On December 24th, Christmas Eve, I celebrated my 45th birthday. Life is good, and I am so happy, but realizing another year had passed so quickly had me feeling a little sad and very melancholy. I got over my birthday blues very quickly when photographer Genevieve Leiper walked into my sister's home to surprise me with the newest issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.  Gen and I had worked on an amazing wedding in the snow storm last Feb. known as the Snowpocolypse. During that storm I was contacted for the first time from an executive at the Martha Stewart offices. I believe this particuler exec. was in marketing or website development. It was all such a blur, it's hard to remember all of the story, but the Martha rep said she liked the look of my website and she needed flowers for her mother-in-law. Well, with 2 feet of snow on the ground and more falling, I was unable to take the flower order. This was incredibly frustrating and sad for me as I have always wanted to impress and or provide flowers for anyone affiliated with Martha Stewart Weddings. But she did say that I could submit information to her if I had any spectacular weddings in the future, and she would help me get the story to the right editor. Oddly enough, at that very moment my bride Tricia was walking down the aisle and her walk would become an incredible story. Tricia and Joe married in the midst of the biggest blizzard I have ever seen. Working with them and having their wedding happen on time, in spite of the snow, was truly wonderful and miraculous. To protect my bride's flowers, we delivered all of the flowers to the reception and the hotel one day early.  It was very clear that this was going to be a real snow storm and I knew we had to be proactive. Photographer Genevieve Leiper and make-up artist Kim Reyes got rooms in the hotel next to the reception to ensure that they would be able to get to the wedding. Only hours after I spoke to the Martha rep, Genevieve began sending me images of the day, and I knew we had something worthy of sending into Martha Stewart.

Getting published or developing some type of relationship with Martha Stewart was truly my goal for last year. One month after setting that goal and one month into 2010, I had a potential wedding that would be featured either on-line or in print, and I was truly thrilled. Just days before 2011 arrived I saw my goal come into fruition. Are we ecstatic, over the moon, and just plain giddy? You bet! But, more than that, we are completely sure it is our commitment and our constant devotion that brings us to such amazing places. It's been almost one year since this wedding, and waiting to share these images has been excruciating but oh so worth it. I want and need to give a huge round of applause to photographer Genevieve Leiper who delivered some of her finest work in the middle of several feet of snow. Genevieve operates her business with the same integrity and thoroughness as we do here at Holly Heider Chapple Flowers,while always delivering amazing art. Here are the remarkable images of the day.

The Cosmos Club, was to be the site of the reception but also stood in for the ceremony as the National Cathedral had to close for the safety of their parish.

Tricia and her guests were staying at the Fairfax On Embassy Row, right across the street from the Cosmos. The bride and guests simply crossed the street to make it to the wedding. I love, love, love, these images.

This couple may be one of the luckiest couples I have ever met. To think that this beautiful ceremony site was a back up plan is hard to believe. I don't think things could have been more lovely, even at the cathedral.

My favorite part about Tricia and Joe was their attitude. Trica never panicked or moaned, she simply said as long as she could marry Joe nothing else mattered.  She kept saying, "All I need is Joe and the vicar." It was that attitude that made all of us want to work so hard for the couple.

Can you imagine standing outside in a blizzard posing for your wedding pictures?

Joe's bout was designed with an onyx pendant that Tricia was wearing the first time they kissed. Joe asked to see Tricia's necklace, and he swooped in for a kiss. Clever Joe!

Tricia's bridal bouquet began by clustering masses of of green foliage's. We actually even used evergreens that we had been hording since Christmas. We also used green hydrangea, green cabbage roses, green bells of Ireland, green berry, blue thistle, blue delphinium, blue muscari and peacock feathers.

 Great, great, grandma's cameo brooch was used to bind the bouquet.

The place card table design featured all the flowers of the day with branches of pussy willow.

Vintage compotes were gathered by Tricia and I to provide a unique look to the centerpieces. 

The venue provided incredible photo opportunities. These images of Tricia and Joe are my absolute favorites of the day.

The couple chose a coffee table book called Washington: Scenes from a Capital City by John Cleave  and Benjamin Forgey as their guest book.  The book features watercolor renderings of the major buildings, monuments, and small neighborhood snapshots. One guest found a picture of her Georgetown row house in the book!

I adored this snow globe that was given to the couple by one of their guests. The globe was purchased at the hotel gift shop and placed next to the programs and the favors.  The snow globe is still on display in the couples home today.

Joe Blumka an accordionist was the only musician that was able to make it to the wedding. Joe performs with The Strolling Strings.

You may wonder what my goals are for 2011, well honestly I am pretty content right now. Its obvious that what we have been doing is working, so are goal is to remain as devoted and as committed as we were in 2010. We  are so happy with this feature and that we have been recognized by Martha Stewart.  Mostly I am so happy to wish Tricia and Joe a very happy married life. I am SO GLAD I was chosen to do your wedding flowers. What a blessing!

Tricia and Joe's wedding was also featured on Martha Stewart Weddings' website, here.