Behind the Design: How Esse Florals Transformed the Zola for Vendors Atlanta Event

Every event we design for, we walk in knowing the room will be full of people who trust us to get it right. Couples trust us because they love each other and they've chosen Esse to reflect that. That trust is a gift and we don't take it lightly.

But the Zola for Vendors Atlanta evening at Bar Blanc was a different kind of room.

Wedding vendors are the most discerning audience we have ever designed for. They know what goes into every arrangement. They can tell in thirty seconds whether a floral design was built with intention or assembled on autopilot. They see the foliage choices. They notice the mechanics. They feel the difference between a room that was designed for the people in it and one that was staged to look good in a photograph. There is nowhere to hide in a room like that — and we didn't want to hide.

When we were brought into this project alongside For Her Events and Jewmarrah Photography, the feeling wasn't intimidation. It was something closer to focus. A specific kind of sharpening that happens when you know the people you're designing for will understand every single decision you make — and why you made it.

Designing for couples is an act of translation. We take a feeling, a vision, a Pinterest board, a colour story, and we turn it into something physical that holds that feeling in a room. It's beautiful work and it's the work we love most.

Designing for vendors is something else. It's designing for people who already speak the language. People who know that candlelight roses read differently under warm event lighting than they do in a wholesale cooler. People who understand why foliage choices matter and what the right texture does to a frame. People who have stood in the setup of their own events and felt the moment a room clicks into place.

We walked into Bar Blanc on an October evening with that knowledge in mind. And we built accordingly.

THE PROJECT: Zola for Vendors Atlanta, October 2025

Zola for Vendors is Zola's initiative for the wedding professionals on their platform — photographers, planners, florists, venues, and every other category of vendor who uses Zola to connect with couples and build their business. The events are designed to bring that community into a room together: to learn, to connect, and to be seen as the professionals they are.

Atlanta made sense. The city has one of the most active and tightly networked wedding vendor communities in the South — a scene that runs on relationships, referrals, and the kind of trust that only comes from seeing each other's work in person. October was the right moment in the season. Far enough past the peak of fall bookings that vendors could breathe, close enough to the end of the year that everyone was thinking about what they were building next.

The venue was Bar Blanc — a design-forward French-inspired cocktail bar and event space on Howell Mill Road. Banquettes, candlelight, an outdoor courtyard, and an atmosphere that Eater Atlanta once described as "slightly more rebellious in nature." For an evening built around the Atlanta wedding community, it was exactly the right room. Not a hotel ballroom. Not a conference centre. A space with personality and a point of view — which is exactly what this crowd responds to.

What the event needed to communicate was clear: this is a room worth being in. Zola is a platform that takes its vendors seriously, and the environment needed to reflect that. Professionalism without stiffness. Warmth without being generic. A space that felt like it had been designed for the people walking into it — not assembled the morning of.

The room held photographers, planners, florists, venue coordinators, and creatives from across Atlanta. People who design rooms for a living. People who photograph them. People who spend their careers making sure every detail is right for someone else's most important day. That's a specific audience and it required a specific kind of intention.

Esse didn't walk into this one alone. This was a three-studio collaboration from the start — and each partner brought something the others couldn't.

For Her Events handled the planning and event coordination. Anyone who has produced an event knows that the florals only land right when the logistics underneath them are airtight — the right timing, the right access, the right sequencing of setup. For Her Events held that structure. They made sure Bar Blanc was ready for the design to go in and that every moving part arrived in the right order. Without that foundation, the creative work doesn't matter.

Jewmarrah Photography was there to capture it. And in our industry, that matters as much as the work itself. A well-documented event becomes a portfolio piece, a press pitch, a piece of content that lives long past the evening it was made. Jewmarrah's eye meant that the design decisions Esse made in the room — the way the candlelight roses caught Bar Blanc's ambient lighting, the depth the sumac leaves added to the frame — were captured the way they deserved to be. We trusted them completely.

Esse's role was the floral design and decor. From the first brief conversation through to the final arrangement placed on the day, the visual environment was ours to build. The flowers, the styling, the gold accents, the custom linen sign — all of it designed to make Bar Blanc feel like it had been made specifically for this community, on this evening, in this city.

Three studios. One vibe. A room that held all of it.

THE DESIGN

The vibe called for a room that felt warm, elevated, and Atlanta. Not a corporate event that happened to have flowers. A space that communicated: we thought about you specifically.

The colour direction came from the season and the occasion. October in Atlanta carries its own palette — earthy, rich, transitional. We worked with that rather than against it.

We built the design around three elements: candlelight roses, sumac leaves, and white stock — with gold accents running throughout and a custom linen sign anchoring the space.

The candlelight roses were the soul of it. That particular variety sits in a warm ivory-to-blush tone that reads differently under event lighting than almost any other bloom — it catches warmth without going pink, stays romantic without going precious. In a room designed to feel welcoming and elevated at the same time, candlelight roses do exactly that. They're not a showstopper. They're the thing that makes the room feel like someone made good decisions.

The sumac leaves were the grounding note. Deep, jewel-toned, and textural — sumac brings an earthiness that keeps an arrangement from floating off into something too delicate or too safe. Alongside the candlelight roses it created depth without weight, warmth without sweetness. It's the kind of foliage that photographers love because it gives an image somewhere to rest.

White stock was the layer that tied it together. Stock has a quality that's hard to articulate — it fills a design with movement and softness without competing for attention. It also carries a subtle fragrance that changes the way a room feels when you walk into it. For an evening event, that detail matters more than most people expect.

The gold accents ran through the design as a thread — in the vessels, in the linen sign hardware, in the finishing details that gave the whole room a consistent warmth without tipping into formality. Gold in the right hands reads inviting. We wanted it to feel like candlelight.

The custom linen sign gave the space its identity. It was the piece that wasn't floral but was designed to hold the same intention as everything around it — the visual centre that told the room what it was for.

When it came together, the room felt like it had always looked like this. That's the goal every time — not that the design announces itself, but that the space feels considered in a way that's hard to place. Guests walk in and something registers before they can say what it is.

THE LESSON: What this project taught Esse about vendor community

There's a difference between building something for people and building something alongside them. We do the first one every weekend. The second one is rarer — and it teaches you things the first one can't.

The Zola for Vendors Atlanta evening at Bar Blanc was the second kind.

When the client is also a peer — when the room you're designing is full of people who know exactly what goes into what you do — the stakes feel different. There's no hiding behind a couple who trusts you because they don't know what they don't know. Every vendor who walked into Bar Blanc that evening could see the choices we made. They could tell what was intentional and what wasn't. They could feel the difference between a design that was built for the room and one that was assembled in it.

That pressure is a gift. It made us sharper.

What we learned from For Her Events is that the space a florist gets to work in is only as good as the coordination behind it. Bar Blanc has its own energy and its own logistics — load-in windows, setup sequences, the particular way an intimate venue like that needs to be approached so the design lands correctly and the room is ready before the first guest arrives. For Her Events held all of that. They communicated clearly, moved efficiently, and made space for the creative work to happen without interference. We've worked in rooms where the logistics were chaotic and the florals suffered for it. This wasn't that. The design we built looked the way it did in part because For Her Events made sure Bar Blanc was ready to receive it.

What we learned from Jewmarrah Photography is that being documented well changes the way you design. When you know the photographer understands light the way you understand flowers — when you trust that what you've built is going to be seen the way you intended it — you make slightly bolder choices. The candlelight roses against Bar Blanc's warm interior. The depth the sumac added in the frame. The linen sign as a visual anchor. Those choices were made knowing they'd be captured by someone who sees what we see. That trust is collaborative even when you're working in different mediums.

The wider lesson is one Atlanta's wedding industry already knows but doesn't always say out loud: vendor community is worth more than vendor competition.

We are not in competition with For Her Events. We are not in competition with Jewmarrah Photography. We are not in competition with Bar Blanc. We are all in the business of building experiences that people remember — and the best version of that work happens when the people doing it trust each other, communicate honestly, and show up for the project as a team rather than as individual contractors fulfilling separate briefs.

Atlanta's wedding market runs on referrals. It runs on reputation. It runs on the relationships that form when vendors work together on something real and see each other at their best. The room we built at Bar Blanc for Zola for Vendors exists because three studios decided to build it together. That's not a collaboration strategy. That's just how the best work gets made.

THE PEOPLE WHO MADE IT

For Her Weddings & Events is an Atlanta-based wedding planning and coordination studio founded by Rachel Collins — a certified wedding planner and coordinator who describes herself as your "wedding planning bestie." Rachel combines bridal experience with event management training to blend transparent communication, attention to detail, active listening, and dedication into every event she takes on. She's LGBTQ+ friendly, Georgia-based, and willing to travel. Find her at forherweddingsandevents.com.

Jewmarrah Photography is the work of Jumara — an Atlanta-based wedding and elopement photographer and videographer with a knack for intentional storytelling who spent three years working in the film and television industry before pursuing wedding photography full time. She describes her approach as visual storytelling that "embraces the emotions and gives, what seems to be just an ordinary image, soul." Her portfolio is exactly what it sounds like: intimate, cinematic, and completely alive. Find her at jewmarrah.com.

As for what Esse is building next — we've just launched Esse for Business, our formal corporate and production offering. Four packages for conferences, brand activations, film and TV productions, and full venue partnerships. And Presence, our new weekly ambient floral subscription for Atlanta's coffee shops, boutique hotels, retail spaces, and creative offices — starting from $200 a week.

If you're a business or organisation in Atlanta that wants florals that actually mean something, we'd love to talk.

And if you're planning a wedding, an elopement, or any kind of celebration — that's where we started, and it's still the work we love most.