from the studio
A Wedding Weekend at Historic Whitewood — Including a Suspended Floral Chandelier
Two full event days, a suspended chandelier over the dance floor, and five floral arrangements floating in a swimming pool.
Most rehearsal dinners are a run-through. You walk the aisle, you pretend, you go out to dinner somewhere nearby and celebrate.
This one was, for all intents and purposes, a whole wedding.
Then the next day, there was another one (the real one).
This past weekend at Historic Whitewood was the largest single-couple installation we have ever done at Lael Florals: two full event days, our entire team on site for both, a specialist rigger brought in for a piece we suspended over the dance floor, and five floral arrangements floating in a swimming pool.
It was also, I'm told, one of the biggest weekends in Historic Whitewood's history.
I want to walk you through it, because it's the clearest picture I can give of what large-scale, garden-style floral design actually looks like when a couple decides to go all in.
What Is Historic Whitewood Like as a Wedding Venue?
Historic Whitewood is a private 108-acre estate in Powhatan County, about 20 miles west of Richmond. We're honored to be on their preferred vendor list, and we like to share and hype up each other's work as much as possible. So, a couple booking us here gets two teams who already know how to work beautifully together. (It also helps that it's a 20-minute drive from my studio in Moseley — that's the shortest trip to any venue we regularly serve.)
The property is almost entirely outdoors. There's a permanent white tent where receptions happen, set on a concrete pad with a generous dance floor. Ceremonies take place on the front lawn beneath oak and magnolia trees. There are bridal suites and a groom's cottage, a pool tucked behind the tent that's perfect for cocktail hour, and a pond toward the back of the property.
Every building on the estate is white clapboard. Trees ring the whole thing, so it's genuinely private.
If I had to describe the feeling in a nutshell: private estate, Southern charm, no barn in sight. It's an outdoor venue for couples who want the countryside without the rustic aesthetic. Whitewood markets itself as a luxury tented venue, but a lot of what makes it feel that way isn't the architecture. It's Chad and Sarah and their team, who run the place with the kind of attention that makes couples feel genuinely looked after.
Our florals took a space that already feels warm and quaint and pushed it somewhere unmistakably grand.
Friday: An Al Fresco Rehearsal Dinner by the Pool
Friday's palette consisted of warm sunset colors: coral and dusty rose, blush, soft apricot, with hits of chartreuse and butter yellow.
Dinner was served al fresco on the pool terrace, long tables in crisp white linen set with green-and-white botanical china and pale pink napkins. The centerpieces were low and loose, designed to be looked across rather than around. Cocktail tables carried simple bud vases in mismatched pressed and cut glass — two or three stems each — on green toile linen.
And then there was the pool.
We built five floating arrangements (I call them floating meadows) in blush, white, and cream, and set them adrift on the water. Two floating decoy swans joined the flowers in the water.
Nobody needs flowers in a swimming pool. That's kind of the point. It's the kind of thing you see on Pinterest but don't think to ask for, and then once you see it, you can't imagine the evening without it.
Practical note: The pool installations were built with premium faux botanicals. An outdoor Virginia August, across two days, with arrangements sitting in chlorinated water full of sun? Fresh stems don't survive that, and I didn't want to put out something that would look tired by the time dinner was served. For a spring or late-fall wedding, I'd have built these fresh. Matching the product to the conditions is part of the job.
The Floral Purse
The single most special piece of the weekend was on the bride herself.
The mother of the bride commissioned a floral purse as a surprise. The bride had no idea it was coming. I had never been asked to make one before.
It came together as a dainty, hand-held bloom cluster with a strand of oversized pearls arched over the top for a handle. Rumor has it, she carried it the entire night.
It's maybe the most unique thing I've made this year — and one of my favorites.
What Is a Suspended Floral Installation?
A suspended floral installation is exactly what it sounds like: a floral piece rigged and hung overhead, floating in midair with no visible support, rather than sitting on a table or standing on the ground.
Saturday's was roughly six feet by six feet: a chandelier of flowers suspended above the dance floor, with a mirror ball dropped down through the center of it. It was built in soft blue and white, with trailing blooms hanging down and brushing the top of the mirror ball.
You saw it the moment you walked into the reception.
Here's how I explain suspended installations to couples: Luxury floral design isn't the bridal bouquet. Of course you need the bouquet. Of course you need ceremony flowers. Luxury is the thing you don't need. Do you need a chandelier of flowers with a disco ball hanging through the middle of it? Absolutely not. But it's really, really cool. No one expects it; everyone remembers it.
Luxury is the thing you don't need.
Practical note #1: A piece this size is not a DIY project, and it isn't something a florist should improvise on site. We brought Reed onto the Lael team as our rigger; he makes us able to do any type of installation imaginable. If you're considering a suspended installation, the two questions to ask are whether your venue's structure can carry the load, and who is doing the rigging. At Historic Whitewood, the permanent tent frame made it possible.
Practical note #2: As with the pool installations, the chandelier was built with faux botanicals. And for the same reason: It hung over the dance floor through a full August day. I wanted it to look exactly as good at the last dance as it did when the first guest walked in.
Saturday: Ceremony and Reception in Blue and White
Saturday shifted the entire palette. Where Friday was warm, the wedding day was cool and classic: soft blue, white, ivory, butter yellow, deep green.
The ceremony was on the lawn under the trees, anchored by tall footed urns. Each one was built wide and airy, reading from a distance without ever looking stiff. The whole point of designing garden-style at scale is that the arrangement stays loose even when it's large.
Reception tables were dressed in blue-and-white embroidered linen. Centerpieces were compact and textural, elevated off the linens in white hammered-metal compotes, flanked by pillar candles in glass hurricanes and monogrammed table numbers. Alongside the chandelier overhead, potted olive trees brought height to the floor of the tent.
Two palettes across two days is a genuine luxury choice. It means designing, sourcing, and building two complete floral programs back to back. And when guests walked in on Saturday, it felt like a different celebration rather than a continuation of Friday night.
Where These Flowers Came From
I started as a flower farmer, and I still believe the best designs begin with the best-grown stems. Scaling up didn't change that. Nearly everything fresh across the weekend came from Central Virginia growers:
Sweet Greens Farm (Scottsville): a family farm where we got our dahlias, lisianthus, cosmos, celosia, and trailing amaranth. The amaranth is having a real moment right now, and deservedly so: It cascades like a waterfall of texture and adds drama without any stiffness.
Central Virginia Flower Collective (Charlottesville): a co-op of Central Virginia flower farmers supplying our hydrangea, zinnias, and celosia. Buying through a co-op means a single order supports several small farms at once.
Floramax Wholesale (Richmond): our wholesaler for garden roses, delphinium, carnations, star of Bethlehem, snapdragon, butterfly ranunculus, Italian ruscus, salal tips, and pittosporum. Imported blooms fill in what Virginia can't grow in August, and give large installations the structure and longevity they need to hold up through a full event.
That mix — local where possible, imported where necessary, and faux where the conditions call for it — is how you get a design that feels grown rather than manufactured, at a scale that actually holds together for two days in Virginia humidity.
What Full-Service Floral Design Actually Requires
The part couples don't see (or, if they do, it’s just the tip of the iceberg) is the labor.
Our entire team was on site both days. It was a full operation from the first delivery Friday morning to the last piece installed Saturday afternoon.
This is the thing I most want couples to understand about investing in this level of floral design: It isn't one person showing up with one bouquet. It's a whole team of people making it happen. The chandelier over the dance floor doesn't exist without Reed constructing it days ahead of time then climbing up a 10-foot ladder the day of. The pool doesn't hold five arrangements without florists securing them to the pool floor underwater. Two complete palettes in two days doesn't happen without a studio full of people prepping, receiving deliveries, and processing stems for three days before the event.
Grand designs require boots on the ground. That's not a drawback; it's the whole reason the result feels the way it does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you suspend floral installations in a tent?
Yes, when the structure supports it. Historic Whitewood's permanent tent frame carried our chandelier and mirror ball. Load capacity and rigging should always be confirmed with the venue and a professional rigger before the piece is designed.
Are suspended floral installations safe over a dance floor?
They are when they're rigged by a professional. Reed, our in-house rigger, handles every suspended piece we build — a capability most wedding florists have to hire out.
Can you put floral arrangements in a swimming pool?
Yes, and we do. For an August wedding, we built them with premium faux botanicals, so they looked immaculate in full sun and chlorinated water across an entire evening. In cooler months, fresh is absolutely on the table.
Do you ever use faux flowers?
For specific pieces, yes — but never as a shortcut. Arrangements that sit in full summer sun or hang suspended in the heat for hours on end are the kinds of cases where a premium faux product simply performs best. Everything else this weekend was fresh, most of it grown in Central Virginia.
Do you regularly design weddings at Historic Whitewood?
Yes! We're one of Historic Whitewood's preferred vendors, a partnership built over multiple weddings together.
What does a full-weekend floral installation involve?
For this couple: two distinct color palettes, two complete design programs, our full team on site across both days, a hired rigger, and roughly a dozen categories of floral pieces, from bud vases to custom floral purses to a suspended floral chandelier. Weekends at this scope fall within our Signature Floral Experience.
Photography by Tefi Nicholas.
Let’s Design
Your Day in Bloom
Every wedding we take is fully bespoke. Tell us a little about yours and we’ll begin dreaming it up together.