Blooms centered around couples, seasons, and venues.
 
Even as a child Cathy Coyle’s happy place was in her mother’s flower garden. Today, she finds bliss roaming among her own cottage garden’s fragrant roses, tulips, daffodils, viburnums, azaleas, and hydrangeas.
 
The Willow Branch owner and lead floral designer embraces the freshest, most vibrant seasonal selections and loves when she can walk outside and clip blooms to build a bouquet or boutonniere. Cathy and her business partner and stepdaughter Mary Pearl Monnes work closely with dedicated local growers, striving to source blooms as close to home as possible. 
 
“Embracing seasonal selections allows the beholder to take forward a memento of their experience, reliving the beauty of a day again and again in the passing of seasons,” Cathy says. 
 
Cathy’s work with flowers began at a street corner flower stand in Georgetown after graduating from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. From there, she designed at various D.C. flower shops until moving to the Shenandoah Valley to work with the renowned dried floral artist Georgia Vance at Short Glade Farm. After freelancing as an artist, floral, and garden designer, Cathy opened a Staunton, VA art and floral shop. She moved to Nelson County in 2008 and converted her barn into a flower studio, launching Willow Branch wedding and event floral design. 
 
“The local wedding industry has grown so much. I had no idea that we would be as busy as we are,” she says. 
 
Cathy and Mary Pearl — who also grew up in gardens and flower shops — have watched the Charlottesville wedding scene transcend from rustic barns to refined vineyards, from basic bouquets and corsages to floral waterfalls cascading down mantles and gravity-defying ceremony statement pieces.
 
With each design, Willow Branch considers color, form, and texture, along with the individual couple and season. The vibe is rooted in garden romance and Cathy and Mary Pearl strive to be as sustainable as possible, eliminating floral foam and buying local.
 
“I can get peonies and butterfly ranunculus through a wholesaler,” Cathy says. “But they’re so much more beautiful, fresher, and vibrant when you buy them locally.”
 
Taking into consideration a couple’s style, Cathy and Mary Pearl will often ask for pictures of things that appeal to them — Pinterest boards of place settings, dresses, suits, and linens are helpful. Willow Branch doesn’t offer packages or templates. Instead, they custom-build each couple’s floral design based on season, venue, and personality. They’ve never repeated a wedding or executed the same design twice.
 
“We love to play up the season,” Cathy says. “We have a couple of weddings coming up for which we’re making a floral meadow continuous light and airy arrangement going down the reception farm table. We’re using tulips, butterfly ranunculus, stock, peonies, snapdragons, and poppies. It looks like a spring garden got transported onto the table. It’s beautiful.”