It was an interesting series of events that led to these images. What was meant to be our first solo Open House , turned out to be man handled by tropical storm Imelda.
Our friends over at Spell Events and Centennial Gardens reached out asking us if we were interested in hosting an Open House at their gorgeous venue. They wanted to highlight the Celebration Garden as many do not get a chance to see the venue when tented. We hesitated as we normally do not do open houses but felt like this was the perfect partnership.
We started planning 6 months before the event by creating the design, floor plan, floral design and managing the overall aesthetic of the event. We put all out vendor friends together to make it all happen and felt so excited about the direction it was heading in. And then the bad news came, a tropical storm was heading our way. This is normal for Houston and nothing that we are not used to. BUT, the storm parked itself on top of Houston and it began to flood, BAD!
Mid way through set up we called it and decided to cancel the whole event. Tens of thousands of dollars down the drain. All the flowers purchased, man power, food from our catering vendors… EVERYTHING. It was a tough moment, but we were determined to make the best of it. After getting everything secured we ventured our way home through all the flooding (what normally would take 20 minutes through traffic, took us almost 3 hours to navigate the scary floods).
Our friends over at Centennial Gardens were kind enough to allow us to come back the next day to get some shots of a modified set up so that we could at very least get some images for our portfolio. But before we get to those, I have to mention some people that truly showed what they were all about and led with kindness every second of this mess:
Scott, at HTX Rentals, was so kind to let us keep the rentals in place just one more day so that we could shoot them and style them the way we wished.
Gretchen, at Centennial Gardens, was so gracious to allow us to come back and invade their space. She was so calm and kind through out all the madness and truly couldn’t have helped us more.
Kelsey, at Spell Events, lead the path to success. She was the perfect support staff for our team. She is the calming presence every event planner should be.
Deji Osinulu, with Deji Osinulu Photography. He came to shoot our work at the last minute and really showed up for us.