Margaret was our White House bride.  Margaret literally worked at the White House for several years. Her term ended this January with the change of the administration. She was the White House Bride to me.  I had fun drilling her on what types of flower arrangements could be seen in the White House.

The look of this wedding was amazing.  I love the vibrant reds and greens. We used antique green hydrangea to give us contrast against the reds.  We eliminated white flowers from the wedding so that the designs were more autumnal rather than holiday. I love this look for the fall; it is unique.

The photographer was Paul Morse, who actually photographed Jenna Bush's wedding.  My daughter was able to shoot these pictures after he set up the look.  We are so grateful to have these images to share.

We also had the pleasure of working with Liz Denny. She was the wedding coordinator for this event. Liz also worked at the White house. In addition to being an event planner, she also owns Peridot Paper. 

We love this picture of the bride's dad.  My daughter, Hannah, took all of these photographs.

We did arrangements of black magic roses, green hydrangea and burgundy carnations for the low centerpieces. The elevated designs featured the red and green orchids.

I love these detail shots of the table. Hannah is showing a lot of talent as a photographer.

Here is an awesome shot of our good friend Rocio Diaz from a Piece of Cake. She is one of the most remarkable people I know. That smile is something you can count on; she wears it every day. Her cakes are a complete work of art that she bakes completely from scratch. Look at the detail on this cake; it totally matched the bride's lace.

We have had a very unusual week. We lost the camera and the computer. This blog has become a huge part of our business. I love showing you each and every detail. To say I was stressed when the camera broke is putting it mildly.  We had six weddings this past weekend, and I really wanted to share them with you. I am so devoted to the blog that I went and bought another camera on the way to the Friday wedding. I downloaded all of the images from the weekend on Saturday night. 

On Sunday the computer crashed. I may have lost most of my photographs, someone is trying to extract all of that information now. I love technology! Nothing like a little extra stress when you are in the middle of wedding season and have seven children. Let's not mention that school and sports just started. I am still missing some of those dreaded back to school papers.   

I want to thank my daughter Hannah for racing to the Apple store with me and her three youngest siblings. This was not an easy task. I am leaving the world of PCs behind. Please bare with us as we make this very painful change over!! Every word I type is a struggle. Much to our surprise we still had two of the weekend's weddings still on the camera. I did a big gratitude dance and here we are. Let's hope the local computer doctor can retrieve the rest of my photos. 

By the way, the Apple store was wonderful, and I can't believe they put up with a four and three year old spinning around their store.

I think we just successfully completed this post. Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holly

Margaret

 

Rachael

 

Charlene

 

Christy

 

Ursula: the bridal bouquet is in the blue vase.

 

Katie

We would also like to share this note from Katie's mom.

 

Holly and Team!!



Thank you so much for your creations and fantastic artistic gifts!!  The Club room at Lansdowne was beautiful!! As the guests entered, we only heard oh’s and ha’s!!!  That is what I wanted as an MOB!  I would recommend you to any bride!!!  This was a WOW moment for everyone that entered the room.  Thank you so much for making this day so unbelievably special!!  I will continue to read your blog because, at the end of a day, seeing such wonderful masterpieces can make anyone’s day great!!!   Linda

 

 

We will bring you each wedding in its entirety throughout the week. From private estates to quaint restaurants, we did it all this past weekend.

 

Holly

 

Today was Katie's wedding day. We have been waiting a long time for this day. Katie's mom, Linda, completely planned the whole wedding, choosing all of the flowers and the overall look of the day. The really beautiful thing about this is Katie trusted her mother entirely and gave her full reign over the look. Katie wanted to be surprised on her wedding day, and she was. How cool is that? Today we used baby blue hydrangea, yellow roses, cream colored stock, light and dark blue delphinium, iris, and spray roses.

 

The maids' dresses were pale butter-cream yellow.

 

We made flower halos for the flower girls.

 

Linda loves our blog and has been a great fan. We loved working with her. She picked out special votives for every table, had every napkin folded in a love knot and then added a yellow rose to every place setting. She even thought to have a September 11th memory table. All of her hard work paid off, and she gave her daughter an absolutely beautiful wedding. What a great mom!

 

The memory table for September 11th.

 

The cake was created by a dear friend of the family. She needs to go pro.

 

We placed these large arrangements on columns for the ceremony.

The whole wedding was perfect just as we planned. We so enjoy working at Lansdowne. I could go on about this event forever, but it is 11:37 pm and we have a very busy day ahead of us tomorrow. 

Here is a little of what is in the cooler; we are going to be hopping this Saturday.

This weekend's work is stunning. We look forward to sharing all of our floral bliss with you in the next few days.

Holly

Sara's wedding last weekend was at Airlie in Warrenton.  We love this venue, and its fabulous gardens. We are sharing these images just to keep you posted on our weekend, but we are longing for the real photographs from the Regeti's. We adore Amy and Srinu Regeti, and we love when we get to work with this very wonderful couple.  Many thanks to the Posh Planner, Lisa Schulz for bringing us all together. A wedding with Lisa is always a show stopper.

 

The bridal bouquet had white Dahlias, which of course I purchased from Don, white mini calla lilies, antique blue green hydrangea, white freesia and green coxcomb that we tinted with a touch of blue.

 

The maids carried bouquets of cream and blue green hydrangea, white roses and the fiddle head ferns. The girls were wearing dresses the same blue color as the hydrangea with brown sashes. This was the perfect bouquet for the maids.

 

The groom had a mini white calla lily, and a small piece of hydrangea and the rest of men had white roses. We painted italian ruscus brown to tie the whole look together.

 

Our amazing altar piece. We created this piece full sided, so it could become the buffet piece.

 

Incredible centerpieces with masses of hydrangea, dahlia, stock, phlox and our favorite something extra, the fiddle head fern spikes.  We also added three vases with submerged blossoms and floating candles to each table.

 

Our elevated designs were spectacular as well. We took the same flowers used in the low centerpieces and added white lilies, and white larkspur. 

Even the cocktail pieces were adorable and were later used on the mantel.

 

This was a beautiful wedding, and we were so happy to be a part of the day.

Our final wedding of last weekend was Erin; she married at Lansdowne.  We designed her flowers exactly to her specification. She truly chose every single flower and exactly how many stems we would use in each bouquet. We would like to have her join our design team, but I don't think we can steal her away from her new groom.

 

Her very sexy bridal bouquet of large and mini white callas.

 

The maids' bouquets with exactly 5 stems of football mums and tricillium. The maids' dresses were black. The bride liked the way the tricillium almost appeared black.

 

The altar flowers.

 

The centerpieces.

 

This was a really great wedding and we loved our bride Erin.

 

These boxes contain this weeks wedding flowers, guess what is coming next.

Holly

We had a whirlwind weekend last weekend, and we have lost a day this week with the holiday. I am a little behind on my posts, but here are a few sneak previews. I will work on getting you better images in the next few days. Lets just say we had some technical difficulties with my camera–meaning it failed me miserably. These shots are from my phone.

 

These were our amazing creations at the Hay Adams Hotel in DC. 22 red Carnation balls suspended from the tent ceiling.  What a mega whopper this one was. I'm hoping for the professional images very soon.  Please note that the ribbons were cut clean, and you did not see all of that ribbon.

 

In addition to all of the designers, I enlisted several of my teenage daughter's friends to help do the holding and hanging. You need young blood on this kind of a job. I myself fell off of a chair and look like an abuse victim. I am a really great designer, but I am extremely clumsy. Those folding chairs collapse when you stand on the seat. Not smart.

 

The place card design: simple, elegant, and very chic.

 

The ceremony actually took place at the Decatur House. The Decatur is right down the street from the Hay Adams. Guests could walk from the wedding to the reception at the Hay.

More pictures coming later today.

Holly

Every year on the first day of school, I make my kids line up in front of the red door for a photograph. The last couple of years, the photograph has become more difficult. We started having babies again, and now we have to wake them up for the photo. This is Grace's first year in the photo, and she clearly has no clue what is going on.

I always dread this time of year. I love having the kids home for the summer.  I wish they could stay home everyday. I don't say this because I am Supermom. I really like the energy when they are in the house. In truth, school just brings a lot more work and responsibility and a kind of discipline we don't like to live by.

 

I just love the baby bed head. The teenage girls would never allow that to happen. Riley simple does not care about hair at all.

 

We also celebrated Hannah's sweet sixteen last night.

 

We are so proud of Hannah. It seems impossible that she is 16 years old.

We have lots of pictures from last week's weddings, and we will post them ASAP.

Holly

Our wonderful couple, Lori and Danny, made the cover section of a DC newspaper. You can see the story here. This is a beautiful article, and I am sure you will enjoy reading about them. The DC newspaper neglected to mention that we were the florist. We still think this is a big deal, and we are happy to report that we were indeed the florist on this wedding. 

My son Alex is always accusing me of saying that I love everything, but I can assure you that I don't love this newspaper right now. It was an extra nice slap because I am one of their customers, and this little insult was delivered to my front door. Happy Sunday morning for me. Every vendor was mentioned but the florist; I am not quite sure how this happened, but I do know the flowers were gorgeous. So beautiful, in fact, that they featured several close up photographs of the flowers. We labored over them for days and feel they are as noteworthy as the cake, the photography, the venue, the event planner and the caterer, who were all mentioned in the article.

So, right now, I do not love the newspaper who shall remain nameless. I do still love my bride and groom, the event planner Jennifer Arrezzo who brought me in on the job, Steve Canning for getting me these images and Don for his fabulous Dahlia's.  

I think the flowers are every bit as important as all the other parts of the wedding day. Is it true or am I just partial to my craft? I would love to see some comments about this.

Holly

In addition to the many hours we spend planning the flowers with the bride and the actual designing of the flowers, we have countless hours that we spend writing recipes.

My son is always scolding me about my blog because I love everything: I love my brides, I love my flowers, I love my kids, I love my bouquets, I love, love, love everything. Not true; I actually hate calculating how many stems I will need for each wedding. This is not to be confused with the part I love, which is writing the individual recipe. I close my eyes and imagine holding my brides requested flowers for her big day. I actually design the bouquet in my head: we will need 9 of this, 12 of that , what about this, let's give her some of that and so on. I then move on down the line: the maids will need 7 of this, 5 of that, and then I have to multiply each item by the amount of maids I have. Every single item has a recipe.  The recipes then have to be consolidated into one big flower request. If we miss one line item, the count is off and everyone is in trouble.

  The recipes usually end up looking like a paper that your English teacher graded. Everything gets crossed out and added to or deleted, depending on the final amounts you need.  In addition to the totals, you have to figure out the smartest way to buy. Some flowers come to me in bunches of 10, some are in bundles of 25 or 50 and some flowers you purchase by the stem. It really is beyond complicated.  I do love my brides, I do love my designs, so I have to struggle through this heinous job every week. We order the flowers for each wedding a week or two weeks in advance.  In truth, if we could do it earlier, it would be better. This is where those dreaded RSVP's come into play. Guest counts even affect the florist. My poor brides are often unsure of their guest counts all the way up to the end, leaving us questioning how many center pieces we need to make.

So I don't love everything, but I do love a lot. Here are some pictures from the flower shop this week, and guess what: I love them.

Don's Dahlias, I love them.

Loved this piece for Tuskies Restaurant; this is for their weekly flower delivery.

Fiddle Head Fern, we really love these.

Love this picture of my girls Debbie and Louise. They are amazing.

Love the color. Love the shape.

An amazing specimen brought in by one of the designers. I have never seen anything like this. And I love it.

Holly

I just wanted to share that we reached 100 reviews with Wedding Wire this week. 100 awesome and incredible reviews for Holly Chapple Flowers can be found here.  I love the Wedding Wire program and believe it is a priceless resource for brides.  Wedding Wire allows brides to share reviews on wedding vendors in their particular area.  If you are a bride and not using Wedding Wire, it is time you found this fabulous wedding planning tool. 

Please also check out the Wedding Aces program. This is the Wedding Wire blog, and I am a guest blogger for WeddingWire Aces. On the Wedding Aces blog you have the advice of every type of wedding vendor you will need to plan an event.  Get ready to have some fun. Wedding planning is way less stressful with the help of Wedding Wire.

Thanks to all of my brides who made a review; your kind words are such an incredible gift to me. I love reading my reviews and am so grateful I am making all of you so happy. Keep those reviews coming. We love them, seriously.

Here are a few pictures from designs we created today. We are loving the way this week is turning out.

Holly

It is Wednesday, and this is our big flower delivery day. Everything on this truck belongs to Holly Chapple Flowers, and this is a mega load. We will be busy for hours processing the flowers.  When all of our little beauties are in the water, we start to get vases ready. Once the flowers have gotten a little drink, we start to design. We have a very busy day ahead of us.

The boxes are labeled with each brides name, so that we can keep them sorted. Each bride has a section in the flower shop for her flowers. We never steal flowers from the wrong section. This would destroy our count or our recipes.

We have pages and pages of invoices. We must go over each line item to make sure we received the stem amount we requested. This, quite frankly, drives us crazy.

Flower delivery day is like having Christmas every week; look at all of those presents to open.

Holly