Motel 6 Flowers / AKA Two Hundred Dahlias

MOTEL 6 Wildflowers / 35MM

We had a big wedding in Santa Ynez that required us to stay up there. We checked into a Motel 6 to save on costs and to add to the charm of an already trying wedding (the last time I stayed at one was when I was quite young so strangely fulfilling a moment of nostalgia for me). It was really, really hot which adds to the stress because time management becomes crucial. The last thing you want is to have wilted flowers or worst, dead flowers. Especially if those flowers are dahlias. Two hundred dahlias. Two hundred star-flowers dahlias. The front-and-center showpieces. So we did what any normal florist would do: we rented them a room!  

We single-handedly transformed the motel into a wildflower workshop! Slowly overtaking the room itself, flowers started to spill out onto the hallway, lining the walls, down the staircases while we used the tops of old AC units to the adjacent rooms for creating arrangements. All this while the delicate dahlias sat underneath the cranked flow of the air conditioner, sipping cool water to their hearts content and letting their stems splash around in the clear water underneath them. I was so delighted that I had my Canon F1 with me to capture this. In the midst of the craziness of processing, arranging, misting, and pleasing all the flowers, something started happening to the otherwise still, stagnant air that was there when we first arrived. Transformation. Elegance and grace started to creep in while jasmine fragrance filled the air of our flower sphere. The magic is real. What flowers can do to a space is downright sensational. What they did to that Motel 6 was utterly transcendental.  

So happy to get to share some of these images with you from that memorable day. And major thanks to my team: Alana + Seana, I could not have done it without you both!