A Snowy Winter Wedding Adventure: Nessie and Adam’s Wedding at Novelty Hill

Here at Flora Nova, we love our job! Being a wedding and event florist is just fantastic; not only do we get to design fabulous floral arrangements and create one-of-a-kind jaw-dropping events, we get to work with the sweetest, most wonderful clients! Our winter wedding couple Nessie and Adam were no exception. From their very first consultation, this couple was so easy to work with, so gracious and willing to collaborate on every detail, just lovely. The planning process moved along slowly, the time ticking away until their wedding day — and then the Seattle forecast dropped a big snowy wrench in all our plans! The whole week leading up to this Nessie and Adam’s wedding at Novelty Hill Winery in Woodinville wine country called for snow, snow, and more snow. What were we going to do???

Well, like the true wedding professionals we are, our team rose to the occasion and made sure that Nessie and Adam had the wedding of their dreams, even if we did have to get a little creative. And the team’s hard work paid off! A big thank you to our bride Nessie for the Google review she wrote below:

We hired Flora Nova for our wedding day flowers and decor – the results were gorgeous blooms and working with an incredible team of people who went above and beyond every step of the way.

The team set up our flowers at our Church, tore down, and went straight to our venue to put together a beautiful display that helped turn our wedding into a real-life Pinterest board. Even with the snow storm, they put in time in the days leading up to our wedding day to make sure that all of the decorations could make it to the venue on time.

From meeting with Christiane to designing a wonderfully elegant theme, to working with Becky to set up special candle requests, to the team bracing the snow that hit Seattle out of the blue – our experience was great and our guests had nothing but compliments on the design!

Nessie, December 2019

Do we have chains for this cargo van??

Becky here, Operations Manager for the Flora Nova team. That’s a picture of me above, snow boots and all, carrying one of Nessie and Adam’s huge altar arrangements into the church. The forecast called for snow, and it sure did come true! Seattle was socked in and our steep hills made travel around the city quite tricky. But our team was prepared: a few days before the wedding, between snowstorms, I drove all of Nessie and Adam’s hard goods (all the vases, stemmed votives, mercury glass, tall centerpiece stands, hurricane candles, urns, ladders, tool kits – you name it!), buckets of flowers, and some of the low arrangements (filled with extra water!) out to the hills of wine country just in case! Since we didn’t know just how big a snow storm was coming next, or just how well our team was going to be able to navigate the icy roads, we wanted to make sure that this sweet couple got as close to their dream wedding as they possibly could. Even if our team couldn’t make it to the venue on the wedding day, at least there would still be a beautiful party.

The morning of the wedding dawned and the promised snow covered the city: there was absolutely no way our cargo van was going to make it up those steep snowy hills to deliver this wedding. Well, where there’s a will, there’s a way! I installed chains (well, my husband installed chains) on my four-wheel drive SUV, I picked up Jenny, our Lead Designer, and we headed to the studio in our snow gear to collect the rest of the flowers. With some careful packing, Jenny and I loaded up my SUV with all of the remaining ceremony and reception flowers and we headed to the church. Good thing we had chains! The steep (and unplowed) neighborhood streets were clogged with almost a foot of fresh snow.

After a beautiful ceremony, Jenny and I hurried to collect all of the ceremony arrangements, load them back into the SUV, and drive them out to Novelty Hill Winery, just outside the city. At the winery, Jenny and I once again hurried to finish setting up all of the previously delivered flowers, candles, and decor, adding in the extra arrangements we had packed into the SUV. Inside the reception space, Jenny and I changed out of our snow boots (whew!) and quickly got to work bringing Nessie and Adam’s lovely vision to life.

I’m proud of the way our team worked together to ensure that our clients got the wedding of their dreams — whatever the weather decided to throw their way. And a big thank you, too, to all of the other vendors who worked together on this event and showed great flexibility, generosity, and a great can-do attitude! What’s a little snow compared to hard work, determination, and a whole lot of love?!

If you liked this winter wedding, check out Sarah and Tobey’s Elegant Winter Wedding

Vendor Team

Reception Venue: Novelty Hill

Floral and Decor: Flora Nova Design

Planning: Prive Events

Photographer: Genelyn Jaye

Rentals: Cort Party Rentals