Excessive-Low Pairings and Artistic Whimsy Make a Charleston Wedding Shine – Backyard & Gun

Losing an hour when clocks “fall back” in October is all the time brutal—particularly if you happen to’re a time-crunched bride. Hayley Price White, nevertheless, was rested, calm, and supremely completely satisfied. The solely factor stressing her was whether or not the shuttle from the Friday afternoon rehearsal in downtown Charleston would get to the rehearsal dinner venue earlier than sundown. “Can we please, please make it in time?” she implored the bus driver. Because at Bowens Island, watching the magenta solar soften over the Folly River is the entire level. “We got there, with an hour to spare,” she says.

Actually, the showstopper sundown was solely a part of the explanation Hayley and her now-husband, Jack, selected the enduring oyster shack to kick off their marriage ceremony weekend. An Atlanta native, Hayley had moved to Charleston after finding out artwork and enterprise at Washington & Lee. It was right here within the Holy City that she started her profession as an artist and on-line gallery entrepreneur, and it was right here she met Jack, who grew up in Mobile, Alabama. “Charleston is central to our story and representative of who we are,” she says. By pairing a bare-bones, rustic fish camp on Friday evening with a proper reception on the Gibbes Museum on Saturday, they curated a weekend that in flip felt consultant of Charleston. Or as Hayley places it, “It felt like the quintessential Charleston experience—the dichotomy of high and low, the mix of pluff mud and saltwater with art and history.”

With the assistance of Jack’s mother and of marriage ceremony planner Haley Kelly, they set about “jazzing up” Bowens’ salty rawness with lights on the uncovered beams and pastel-hued florals and linens, however not a heavy hand. “We really wanted the space—the marsh and the views—to speak for itself,” Hayley says. While the decor might have been spare, the bride’s rehearsal costume was all aptitude. She discovered the enjoyable, flouncy quantity with cascading ruffles at a pattern sale and acquired it regardless of its residual spray tan stains. “I’ve always loved fashion—that’s part of my artistic, creative side—and I just had this vision. Of course, I’m going to shuck oysters in it!”

Her marriage ceremony costume was an analogous impulse purchase, with an help from her personal mother. Shortly after the couple bought engaged, her mom, an Atlanta-based inside designer, known as to say she’d seen a costume within the window at Britt Wood’s BW Designs. “I know it’s your wedding dress,” her mom stated. Sure sufficient, BW Designs was their third cease when Hayley was on the town on a dress-buying mission, and she or he had the identical speedy response. “Please take it out of the window,” she requested upon strolling within the salon. “I loved the lace and that high-neck Pippa Middleton style. It fit my whole vibe of tradition meets sparks of creativity.” Her sister and Jack’s two sisters have been bridesmaids for the Catholic ceremony at St. Mary of the Annunciation, whereas a bunch of pals wearing various shades of sage greens and blues rounded out the unofficial marriage ceremony social gathering.

To fill a spot between the late-afternoon ceremony and cocktail hour underneath the Gibbes rotunda, the couple shared solutions of their favourite Charleston go-tos (get a drink at Blind Tiger, stroll down King Street). “We really wanted people to experience this city we love,” Hayley says.

At the museum—the right reception venue for an artist—visitors mingled within the galleries whereas aproned oyster shuckers circulated about, “a fun Charlestonesque nod, but elevated,” she says. Dinner, offered by Cru Catering, and dancing adopted within the Gibbes courtyard, the place florals by Blossom Bay Design complimented tablescapes anchored by cloth Hayley’s mom had discovered early on. “She treated it like an interior design project, making pillows out of that fabric to give the reception a homey feel. Between her expertise, my creative energy, and our planners’ attention to detail, it all came together,” says Hayley, who now retains these pillows in her new residence in Beaufort, South Carolina, the place she and Jack lately moved.

Their marriage ceremony cake was topped with Hayley’s mother and father’ personal sugar-flower cake topper, which had miraculously survived thirty-three years, whereas old-fashioneds with a custom-stamped ice block, a bar stocked with PBR (“silly, but kinda my thing,” Hayley confesses), and late-night espresso martinis stored the celebration going. “We couldn’t get people off the dance floor,” she says. “My grandmother, who’s always perfectly put together and doesn’t drink, said it was the best night of her life.”

A current return journey to Bowens supplied additional proof that their marriage ceremony left a long-lasting Lowcountry impression. During the rehearsal dinner, the couple had added their very own Sharpie-inscribed graffiti to the well-inked partitions, so that they went to test if it’d been scribbled over but. Hayley loves Jack continues to be there.