Weddingbee Blog

On Monday afternoon, we decided to tear ourselves away from the beach long enough to experience some local culture and history by visiting a South Carolina plantation. We opted to go to Boone Hall Plantation, as it was the closest plantation to our resort and it boasted some original architecture from the Civil War era, which was a big draw for us. After getting there, we discovered that we weren’t the only ones smitten with the scenery at the plantation; multiple movies have been filmed there, including The Notebook. The landscaping was gorgeous; the plantation’s most impressive landscaping feature was a long road lined with gigantic Oak trees.

After scoping out the grounds, we decided to watch a presentation on local Gullah Gullah culture, highlighting the history, language, and music that pervaded plantations during the 1800s. The presentation included an interactive portion, calling for volunteers from the audience to participate in a music demonstration. Bravely, Mr. Snow Cone decided to participate, showing off his natural sense of rhythm.

We were preparing to tour the plantation’s mansion when I checked the weather on my phone. It read, “Severe thunderstorms developing directly over Boone Hall Plantation.” Awesome. Sure enough, in about three minutes, we went from this:

… to looking at this:

It poured. And gusted. We sought refuge in a tiny little visitor’s center to wait it out. After about an hour of “waiting it out,” we decided that enough was enough, and we’d had our fill of thunderstorms and plantations. We headed back to the resort to relax before checking out a cool local restaurant for some killer seafood. Unfortunately, the severe thunderstorms just kept coming, so we decided to play it safe and stay on the resort for dinner. Twist our arms, we headed back to our beloved Sea Island Grill for some light fare before calling it a night, hoping the worst of the bad weather was behind us.

The next morning, Mr. Snow Cone and I were excited to see sunshine coming through our windows - the bad weather was over! Our happiness didn’t last very long, though, as we casually turned on the television to discover a startling image.

Image via The Charleston Porch / The Weather Channel

Yep, that’s Irene, our honeymoon third-wheeler. Earlier in the week, we had heard that Charleston could be hit by something that was maybe going to be a mild hurricane, but definitely not until Saturday evening at the latest. At that point, we decided not to worry about it, since we were scheduled to be out of Charleston by Saturday night. So, imagine our discontent upon seeing this revised forecast on our television - Category 3 hurricane with 115 mile per hour winds, hitting Charleston pretty darned directly, on Saturday morning.

We wrung our hands and pouted for a few minutes before deciding that we didn’t want to get caught up in a tidal wave of people trying to revise flight plans as the storm drew nearer. With heavy hearts, we decided to end our stay in Charleston about 24 hours early, flying out on Friday instead of Saturday, hoping to avoid Irene’s wrath as much as we could.

Did you have to rearrange your honeymoon plans because of some less than stellar weather?

(all photos personal unless otherwise noted)