Phil & Holly's Wedding

We spent our last night in South Carolina at Phil and Holly's wedding. The ceremony was in the oldest Baptist church in Charleston. We were running a little bit late as a result of driving into a massive thunderstorm that came out of nowhere (see previous post about crazy weather...). When we walked into the church the ceremony was already well underway. In typical fashion, I began clicking away, taking pictures of the beautiful bride and groom. Mark leaned over and whispered to me "I don't think you're supposed to be taking pictures." We then realized that no one -- not even the photographers -- were taking pictures. In fact, the photographers were not even in the church, they were waiting outside. Oops. Oh well, I got some cute pictures of the bride and groom. The reception was at Boone Hall Plantation, one of the oldest working plantations in the country. You drive into the plantation on a road flanked by these amazing, huge oak trees and can see the mansion at the end of the road. We saw the house and thought, wow, this is going to be a beautiful reception. So we parked the car and started to walk towards the reception. We were waved right past the main house, past the slave quarters, to a wooden boat house in the back of the plantation. A little different than we expected, especially when we walked into the house and realized there was NO AIR CONDITIONING and, surprise, surprise, the house was right on a swamp. At the cocktail hour, there was a female African band (I'm not sure that is the right way to describe them...but they were great). They sang our wedding song, "Let's Stay Together". The featured drink was an iced tea mojito. It was delicious and dangerous. As seating cards, they used paint chips. They wrote your name on a color and you had to find the table with your color. We were at "celestial blue." Once the seating cards were removed, the board was used for guests to write down their well wishes to Phil and Holly. The reception was a lot of fun. We were very hot and very sweaty, but it did not stop us from dancing. Mark was upset that he did not get the memo that flip flops were appropriate attire. Phil's younger brother convinced the "older" guys to shotgun beers. The picture came out great but the shotgunning didn't go so well. It was a great long weekend away but we were thrilled to see little Lyla Bell!