Wedding Wednesday: South Carolina Wedding

I'm gonna recap our recent trip to South Carolina a little bit out of order since today is wedding wednesday and the whole point of our Charleston/Kiawah trip was our friends' wedding on the 11th.

 

MG and I along with his best friend and girlfriend, along with another good friend and his wife all left Kiawah Island (where we'd been the last 6 days) on Friday morning, the morning of the wedding.

We went and grabbed lunch in Charleston after checking into our hotels, and then the girls and I all went to Dry Bar to get our hair done (the Southern humidity does not do hair good).

After getting changed into our wedding gear, we made our way back to the hotel where the buses were picking up and rode about 40 minutes to the wedding site, Magnolia Plantation, which was stunning!

Unfortunately, it had been sprinkling rain off and on during the day and on the bus ride up, the skies opened up and down-poured. Did I mention the wedding was outside?

Luckily the skies cleared up for a bit, and we were all able to enjoy the ceremony without getting wet

 The procession started...everyone looked great...and so was their backdrop...

 And then it was time for the bride.

She looked like she was straight out of a magazine...absolutely stunning!

As she walked down the aisle, thunder clapped in the skies, and she said "This would happen when two people like us try and get married" to which everyone laughed :)

The ceremony was done pretty quickly, which was just as the raindrops started to fall. We all made our way inside to the reception site for cocktail hour, and soon the rain stopped so we could enjoy the scenery and get some pictures in this amazing setting.

I love this picture of the 6 of us :)

Since the bride is a chef for a catering company, the food at the reception and cocktail hour were amazing!

Dinner was done a little differently, with several food stations around the reception site, and no real seating arrangement. We ended up eating outside at the stand-up tables since the weather had cooled down and the tables inside were all taken by family.

All of a sudden it was time for cake cutting...but this couple had cheese instead of cake. And yes, we all made the joke that they were 'cutting the cheese.' We're mature.

One of the unique parts of the wedding was meeting the primary male model for Ralph Lauren's Polo campaigns. I had known he was going to be there, and when he was spotted, we went up and talked with him for a bit with the groom. He mentioned he'd met the groom in Manhattan so I asked what he did (knowing full well what he did) and he said he worked for Ralph Lauren. It was my mission to get a picture with him. 

I had taken surreptitious photos during the cake cutting...

(go ahead and call me #creepy...I'd instead like to call me #clever) hehe

But this one has surfaced since the wedding...

He's the tall one....not looking particularly model-like, but it was him:

{via}

After that fun siting/encounter, the night continued with lots and lots of dancing. 

Some girl stepped on my foot with her heel as we were dancing and I still have a fist sized bruise on the top of my foot. Awesome sauce.

We took some more photos outside...

When the party wound down, everyone headed back to the buses as the newlyweds departed:

Once back in Charleston, we met up with the couple at a bar by their hotel which was a lot of fun.

The night ended with a trip to a pizza place with our friends and then off to bed since it was late and we had to drive back to VA the next morning (ugh).

Overall, their wedding was the icing on an amazing week-long vacation in South Carolina....which I'll recap starting tomorrow! 

We were so glad to get to be part of their special day :)