Today is Meredith's wedding day. Her wedding will take place at the fabulous Whitehall Manor in Bluemont. We created her bouquet with circus roses, red spray roses, orange mango callas, yellow callas, billy balls, fiddle head fern and orange dahlias from Don. We added mini grapevine balls into the bouquet and collared the bouquet with one of my favorite elements: angle vine. 

 

The maids bouquets were created with burgundy mini Gerber's, orange orchids, crocosmia, solidago, circus roses, hypericum berry, and bronze button mums. We used the angel vine to wrap the maids bouquets as well.

 

Mini bouquets for the mothers.

 

The grooms boutonniere.

 

The groomsmen.

 

The bouquets all packed and ready to go.

Our centerpieces; we love that flying yellow oncidium orchid.

Our altar pieces.

Here comes "in the cooler."

Super Sexy bouquets for our Oatlands Plantation wedding tomorrow.

Beautiful bouquets for our Whitehall wedding tomorrow. I love this color combination for a unique fall look.

Sleepy time.

Holly

This bouquet was created with hydrangea, zinnia, and lambs ear from my garden. The grass is roadsidius–or cut from the side of the road. Roadsidius just sounds more sexy. We wrapped the bouquet in bark wire. Genevieve photographed the bouquet in one of the copper pots from my booth at On A Whim.

 

This bouquet was created with fern I found while taking a walk with my daughter. We used fall colored roses, scabiosa pods, mini poppy pods and a foliage called safari sunset or leucadendron. We wrapped the bouquet in burlap and photographed the design in a old wooden box.

 

This little vase was created as a sample to try on our new shepherds hooks. We thought it was so cute we took it along to the photo shoot. The design is a simple vase with ribbon wrapped around the vase. The ribbon will actually be our way of hanging the vases on the hooks. We used bright green spider mums, green roses, lavender mums and green hydrangea.

 

As I have mentioned before my daughter Hannah is showing lots of talent as a photographer, so she caught this great image of Genevieve at work. The following images are my bouquets through Hannah's eyes. 

 

Many thanks to Genevieve for feeding me so many images this week.  We will post "in the cooler" later today, as in really late today.

Holly

 

I woke up to these fabulous pictures in my inbox this morning. When I saw them, I knew I had to change my blog post today, so that I could share them with you.  Thanks to Genevieve Leiper for displaying her photography with us again today. I will post the rest of our photo shoot images tomorrow. So, sit back and relax and check out this really beautiful event. 

Super sexy photographs, and we love them!!!!!

Holly

Apparently, Michelle had a really great wedding day.  She shared her joy by flipping through the lobby of the George Washington hotel in downtown Winchester. I would say she was flying high!!

 

In this photo you can see how truly beautiful my bride is; the flipping picture left a little to the imagination.

We started the bridal bouquet with yellow roses which were in remembrance of her aunt. The bright yellow rose became the theme of the day and a great way to have her aunt be a part of the day.  Every time I saw a yellow rose, I remembered the significance of what we were creating. The maids wore a bright turquoise blue dress, so we decided to make all of the flowers pop; for the bridal bouquet we used the gloriosa lily, nerine lily, deep purple colored stock, bright green roses and fillers with purple orchids. We loved the happiness this bouquet exuded.

Our maids carried bright green bouquets with hot pink roses.

Our flower girls were so adorable.

The family home was transformed into the reception site.

The catering was handled by Fusions Catering. Blaise, an owner of Fusions, handled the event.

This is the sweetheart table. Designer Jessie decided to enhance the table by placing garnish blossoms on this space. She used extra flowers we brought along to the wedding; we call that bucket of flowers our doctor bucket. If we see something that needs a little extra touch, we have the doctor bucket flowers to save the day. The doctor bucket ensures that we are prepared for everything.

We created half of the centerpieces with yellow lily, roses, bells of Ireland, orchids, mums, stock and fillers and placed them on the tall cylinders.  When your event is outside, you need really large pieces to fill up the space. Our tent would have looked empty without these show stoppers. To keep the budget under control we used the maids bouquets for the rest of the tables. We actually also made a few more maids bouquets than we needed for the ceremony, so we would have enough for half high and half low centerpieces. I think the overall look is amazing.

One huge thanks to mom Betsy for being so wonderful to work with.  I am always so touched by the kindness I see between the mothers and daughters.  Michelle is lucky to have a mom like Betsy.  I loved this family, and we really enjoyed being a part of the day. If I could do a little happy flip for this family, I certainly would.   

Holly

We started our weekend with Melissa's wedding at Lansdowne Resort. We played with this really cute chalk board just before we left.  I purchased this to add into our rental inventory. I can see this used for a welcome to guests or even a place card table piece. The little shelf is large enough for a great flower arrangement.

 

We brought Melissa a bouquet of deep purple hydrangea, purple stock, purple orchids, purple tulips and deep purple calla lily. We also hid a beautiful white gardenia in the back of the bouquet.  My bride loves gardenias and wanted one in the bouquet for sentimental reasons. You will see later that she loved the gardenia so much that she decided to face it out towards everyone instead of keeping it just for herself.

 

The maids carried bouquets of lavender and purple stock, white phlox, lavender roses, purple carnations, and white mini callas with a dark purple center.

 

The mothers were given small mini bouquets of freesia, calla lily and roses.

 

We created a halo of baby's breath and limonium for the flower girl. The family placed a silk purple and lavender halo over the fresh one.  Melissa wore the silk halo 20 years ago when she was the flower girl in this young ladies mothers wedding. Wow, that is a mouth full, I hope you got that.  Very sweet story.

 

Loving that Gardenia!!

 

 

 

 

 

I loved seeing how well the maids bouquets worked with their gowns. The above photograph of my maid is one of my favorite pictures of the day. Everyone was so relaxed and simply enjoying the beauty of the day. 

 

I also got this great shot of the MOB, dad and granddad.  If you read Friday's post, you know that one of my moms brought us chocolate cake. This is the wonderful mom who made sure we had treats in the flower shop while we designed.

 

The altar had two large arrangements on columns, and we marked family reserved seating with clusters of hydrangea,carnations and mums.

 

See that Gardenia.

 

Our reception had elevated and low centerpieces. We used mini white calla lily and deep purple stock, carnations and orchids flying out of white football mum clusters.

 

The low designs were in square cubes with deep purple carnations, lavender roses, lavender phlox, white football mums and the deep purple orchids.

The whole wedding was just stunning, and once again everyone was thrilled with the flowers. What a perfect weekend to get married. The weather was perfect. I loved this family, and I loved working with them. I am so grateful for their kindness and appreciation of our flower art.

Holly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This has been a week of major growth and change. What seemed like a disaster on last Sunday has turned out to be a huge blessing. In five days, we have converted from my crashed PC to my new iMac computer. With this incredible change we can now blog posts that look like this. I have not had this much fun in years. This will allow me to express a completely new kind of flower art.

 

We have two wonderful weddings tomorrow, and we will be sure to bring home lots of pictures to play with.

It just keeps getting better and better.

Holly

I just wanted to share with you a few really great things that my bride Jessica sent me.  Here is her inspiration board, which can be created by going to Bridal Canvas.

As you can see, Jessica has a really great look for her wedding. However, her color combinations are not your average wedding tones.  By creating this board she was able to explain perfectly to me what she was looking for.  I think this is an awesome way to provide a sense and a feel of look to your vendors. The inspiration board also can give the bride visual comfort if she is trying to bring together unique tones. I have to say, I am really looking forward to making this board come to life for Jessica.

Another great tip from Jessica was how she created her seating chart.

For Jessica's wedding we are having a long banquet style table. It is important for me to see this layout to make certain we have our centerpiece count correct. We are not simply designing one centerpiece for each table. With this wonderful visual layout I was immediately comfortable choosing how many centerpieces we would need. 

I also know of all of the things a bride must do, the seating chart is the absolute, flat out, hardest part. Many a bride has stayed up late into the night getting her seating correct. This system is remarkable and is from my good friends at Wedding Wire. This system allows you to assign a number to each person and see your end results. Wedding Wire has endless resources for the bride; the technology they share with their brides is amazing. The seating chart link can be found here.

Now about "let them eat cake." One of the great things about doing what I do is the relationships I develop. Quite frankly, we enjoy doing all of our hard work, but the icing on the cake is always the friendships we make. It is not the balance paid when the job is done. I am incredibly touched by my brides and their families. I have so many wonderful memories of this year. So many girls and their moms (you know who you are) who truly cared about me and my family. 

I love arriving at the wedding and hearing "Holly we love you" or "give me a hug" or" we knew we could trust you." The incredible faith my customers have in me is so rewarding. In truth it is very often surprising as we may sometimes appear a little crazy or even flighty. Well, I am a little flighty; in flight is a perfect way to describe me.  I often feel like I am that good fairy flying about in the Disney Movies, tapping her wand at this, and then off to handle that. I am always off to something else. I never have just one thing to do. I am often hard to reach by phone or email. I am always running through the house: upstairs, downstairs, and "in the cooler."  It does not seem to scare my clients, and I love them for that.

I am always shocked and amazed at the kindness. Just yesterday, one of this weekend's brides called to ask if she could stop by. I have to honestly say my first thought was, "Did I forget something: a piece of lace or a flower girl basket?"  In spite of how crazy it may sound around here, we do not forget things, so I was perplexed as to why they needed to come by. I immediately asked, "What's wrong?" She replied nothing; we want to bring you and your flower ladies a little treat to have while you are working.  I mean really who gets that kind of love and support; this was seriously an amazing chocolate cake. We are really lucky at Holly Chapple Flowers. So keep on loving us, and we will keep on loving you right back. 

And remember, yes, it is crazy here but as flighty as I might seem, we always bring rockin', awesome, over the top flowers to each and every bride.

Thanks so much,

Holly

I am relying on my good friend, Joylyn Hannahs, to capture the images of my bride Rachel. So please check out her blog and website, as photographs will be posted soon.  In the mean time, here are my photos.


Last weekend was one of those weekends where we just could not get photographs of everything.  We did get this one photograph of our Cover Girl, gorgeous, bride Rachael, as she was coming into the church. We got to have a quick hello, a hug and a kiss, and we were off to the reception. I am so sorry I did not get to see her with the bouquet.

For Rachel we created an all white bouquet of mini callas, hydrangea, roses and orchids. Very dramatic and very perfect for Rachel.

Her maids carried bouquets of white football mums, purple bullet allium, purple mokara orchids, and white mini callas with a purple center. We also used a speckled mokara orchid for fun.

I love this image my daughter Hannah took; it shows the excitement we all feel on a wedding day. Just wait until she sees the flowers.

We created these enormous balls of hydrangea, and we added purple orchids to fly out of the designs. The alternating centerpiece was a cylinder with swirling callas and orchids. We are longing to see the real photos from this wedding.

Our next bride was Ursula; she came to me a few weeks before her wedding. She was having a small intimate affair at the famous Patowmack Farm in Lovettesville. This is known as the thousand star restaurant. Patowmack is a organic culinary treat.

 

We created a simple bridal bouquet that could also double as a centerpiece. We gave Ursula my blue vase to borrow, and she used this to place her bouquet in after the ceremony. Ursula had a long banquet style table, and we created two arrangements in this very unique color pallette to complete her table.

Our last wonderful bride of the weekend was Charlene.  We delivered her flowers to the church, and we only have the images we took here at the house. I am hoping Charlene will get us some pictures. Her wedding took place at a church in Ashburn with a reception at The Thomas Birkby House. 

We used a tight beautiful ball of deep purple hydrangea to create Charlene's bouquet. We then pulled through the hydrangea white roses, deep purple eustoma, purple bullet allium (which happened to be very popular this weekend), purple orchids, lavender phlox and lavender freesia. We bound the bouquet with purple satin ribbon and decorative pins.

Oddly enough, Charlene chose almost the exact same bouquet for her maids. I happened to show both Rachel and Charlene a picture of a bouquet that I had created for a bridal show. They both happened to love this bouquet, but they each added their own twist. 

Here is the bouquet from my portfolio that inspired both Rachel and Charlene.  It is amazing to me how one element can completely change a design.

So that was a total of six bridal bouquets, and I think if I can remember correctly I started this week with the blog post of six bridal bouquets big and small we made them all.

Holly

This is my bride Lacey. Lacey married two years ago at White Hall Manor in Bluemont. It is her second wedding anniversary. I am very proud of the fact that Lacey still loves us, even after two years. That is very cool!!! In fact, Lacey and her mother have been keeping up with the business by reading the blog. Lacey is one of my featured weddings on my website. You can see the professional images taken by L.H. Lindberg there. Lacey wrote me just a few weeks ago, and I thought it would be fun to share that with you, plus a little update about how they are doing now. I will also share with you the photos that I took that day; they were never published. Lacey was pre-blog. Even though the wedding was two years ago, it is an awesome example of our fall designs. First, here is one of her last emails to me.

 

Hi Holly,

Just thinking of you an wanted to say hello!! I love your blog. What a fabulous way to keep up with you, your family, and your new brides!

I always think about our wonderful wedding experience and flowers this time of the year. I remember things kicking into high gear, finalizing all our selections. What great memories! Our flowers were absolutely gorgeous!! Don't know if I told you, but I had my bouquet preserved and dried many of our flowers. I have them displayed in various places throughout our home. The dried flowers have faded in color, but I just love them. The hydrangeas dried beautifully, as did Peter's boutonniere. …Hard to think we're almost at our 2-year anniversary!!

I thought about you in January and read about Grace's birth. She is just adorable and growing like a weed! I started writing you an email, but somehow I lost it and never got around to writing again.

I think of you often, throughout the year, but you're especially in my thoughts as our anniversary nears. Two years later, we're so appreciative of your incredible work!

I need to get back out to On a Whim and check out your area. I love that store!

Hope this note finds you doing well!

Hugs,

Lacey

I love this picture. These stands will always remind me of Lacey. She wanted iron elevated designs with hanging votives. Wonderful Ted, Designer Debbie's husband, twisted all of those wires and made those cones for the hanging votives.  These stands and votives are still some of my favorite inventory.

This photo also shows all of the detail work that Lacey did. The table was completely dressed; Lacey worked diligently on her wedding to make certain everything was perfect.  All of her efforts certainly paid off; everything was so incredibly beautiful. 

All of the tables were elevated except for Lacey and Peter's table. I wanted them visible all night. So we created this very lush centerpiece for their table.

The cake was designed by Rocio Diaz of a Piece of Cake, and yes I love her!!!!

Now here is the news from Lacey and Peter.

We had a very busy anniversary. We had dinner at the Lightfoot and then came back to our house for dessert. Dinner was excellent; as you know, Lightfoot's food and service is always excellent.

 

Okay…now for the blurb about us..hmm…what can I say?

 

It seems so hard to believe that two years have passed since our wedding date. It took us 15 months to plan our wedding, the day was absolutely beautiful (thanks to our many wonderful wedding vendors, including Holly and her amazing flowers!), and yet it passed so quickly. As the saying goes, time really flies. The first few years of marriage have found us busy–we've enjoyed spending time together fixing up our home and are finally getting a chance to sit back and enjoy some of our hard work. We've taken a few trips to the beach and spent time visiting with friends and family. As our second anniversary was just celebrated, it's a nice time recall our wedding day and look forward to what the future holds. One year ago, we could not have predicted in a million years what we would be experiencing today. My husband lost his job in June, and we are now embarking on the exciting journey of starting a home improvement/construction business. Who knows what the next year holds, but we are looking forward to another great year!

Hope you are doing well! We think of you often. I just looked at our wedding pictures and am still struck by the beauty of our wedding and the wonderful flowers!! How beautiful! It would be great to re-live that day again and again!

Hugs,

Lacey

 

Thank you Lacey and Peter for sharing with us.  It makes me so happy that we stay in touch.

Hugs back at you both,

Holly

These shots are of Christy's bridal bouquet. Christy married this past Saturday at a private estate home.  The event was planned and directed by Lisa Schulz of the Posh Planner.  You can always depend on Lisa for an extraordinary event.

The bouquet was created of hot pink roses, deep purple callas, purple orchids, lavender stock, purple eustoma, purple rain freesia and hot pink orchids.

We used deep purple carnations in the maids bouquets.

The cocktail hour was on the back terrace of the family home. We created these small centerpieces for this space. We had a total of seven cocktail designs for this area.

Large arrangements were created for the food stations. 

A fabulous picture of the whole tent. This wedding was luscious.

The vibrant jewel tones were striking with the deep purple linens. 

Here we are setting the large centerpieces up on cylinders.  Getting them into the center of the table is tedious work. But the final effect is so worth the effort.

The absolutely incredible cake was designed by Carolyn Taylor of Taylor Made Cakes.  Her work is stunning and she completely bakes by scratch.

 

Guests enjoyed music during the cocktail hour and DJ services provided by Kevin Olivera. He is is the owner of Olivera Music and Entertainment.

I was able to get this very lovely shot of my bride and groom's first dance. Great wedding!!!!!

Holly