My Sister's Wedding - My Gal Pal Road Trip
I don’t know how I’m going to find the right words to describe how amazing this weekend was, honestly. Recently my sister and her new husband (omg WUT) finally tied the knot!! This was nearly a decade in the making with like a two year engagement period just filled with anticipation so let's just say, a lot of people were really looking forward to this! And to add to the anticipation they had a destination wedding in Charleston, South Carolina. When we officially found out the location, my friends and I immediately started planning our wedding weekend getaway.
To make this the most epic weekend ever my friends and I decided to road trip down to South Carolina, ROADTRIP! (Yes, that was a New Girl reference) So after packing as little as possible and thanking our 4th bff who was meeting us down there after her flight, all 3 of us crammed our stuff into my Subaru and off we went. We left earlyish on Friday morning and we were headed straight to Roanoke, Virginia. Even though it was early we were PUMPED mostly because of the amazing playlist we made. It has over 14 hours of music surely to get you just as pumped as we were to be sitting in the car for 7 hours haha.
We spent the night in Roanoke which included a dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings, a little mall shopping, and maybe some flirting with the guy at the front desk (oh hey Jarromy). The next morning we took full advantage of the complimentary breakfast and off to Charleston we went! When we got there the weather was amazing! It was sunny and warm, basically summer still. We rushed into our hotel room, unpackaged our amazing welcome gifts, (made by my legend of a mother) and started getting ready for the festivities that evening.
My friends and I met up with my sister, her fiance and my sister’s best friend, the wedding officiant, and headed over to a welcome cocktail hour at King Street Dispensary. It was to thank everyone who traveled down for Lauren and Kyle’s big day and was so much fun! The drinks were amazing, the staff was so nice, and saying hey to everyone who came from back home in Jersey was so much fun! We ended our night with about 12 of us heading to a local pizza place for dinner, the Mellow Mushroom. OMG it was so good! My friends and I shared gluten free pizzas since one of our gal pals is GF, and it was delicious! One of the best GF crusts I’ve had. We couldn’t go to bed without stopping for ice cream where Megan was even able to have a GF cone which she hasn’t had in years! The ice cream was homemade, so tasty and just what we needed before we crashed that night.
The next day, Sunday, was our day to become tourists. We got up pretty early to an EPIC sunrise which got us all excited for the day. We got ready to head out and off to breakfast we went. We went to Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit and let me tell you, on Sunday morning that line formed REAL QUICK. We got there JUST in time to beat the crowd but the wait was worth it. Those biscuits are dang good, even the GF ones too! We stopped back in our room to change quick because we were headed to the beach. We jumped back in my messy car and off to Sullivan’s Island we went!
Once we got to the island we really weren’t sure what kind of beach it was going to be like, how parking would be and everything but when we got there we were so surprised. We found a parking spot less than 5 minutes from the beach! We grabbed our towels and walked right onto the beach which wasn’t crowded at all! We were probably most excited because there weren’t many people but there were a lot of dogs. Ugh it was so cute watching them play in the water and dig holes in the sand!! We spent a few hours there soaking in the sun and wading in the warm ocean water before going out for lunch. For lunch we went to Poe’s Tavern, which was Edgar Allen Poe themed as you probably could’ve guessed and it was delicious! French fries to die for honestly.
As our touristy day came to an end we washed up for the rehearsal dinner. I headed over to the venue with my family for the rehearsal which got everyone super excited for the next day! Right after, some of the girls involved with the wedding went over to Camellia’s, the pink bar for drinks. This pink bar is no joke, let me tell you. It is REALLY pink in there haha but the drinks are AMAZING. I had an apple champagne type of cocktail and it was DELISH. I felt super boujee in there not gonna lie. We celebrated Lauren’s last night as a single lady, then went to Indaco for the rehearsal dinner. It was SO good!! The food tasted amazing and was so unique but familiar enough to want to try everything, it was a great place!
We hit the hay pretty early that night in preparation for the wedding the next day. Yes, their wedding was on a Monday but for a really good reason! It was the exact same date and day of the week of their first date 8 years ago, way back in high school...CRAZY. It was also a brunch wedding which was actually really cool, mainly because breakfast food is THE BEST. So at 6:30 am ish I was awake and heading over to the venue with my sister, mom, officiant (Emma), my aunt and her daughter the flower girl! We went right into hair and makeup and I started bumping (well, quietly playing in the background) another amazing playlist I made which is sure to pump you up!
After we were all ready the wedding began and omg it was just like, SO NICE. There wasn’t a huge amount of people attending so it was a really nice intimate wedding. The weather was perfectly sunny and filled the cute little courtyard with gorgeous light. All morning I chatted with family and friends, sipped on a delicious signature drink and def got my butt beat in tic tac toe by my little cousins. When it was time for the reception we all headed inside to a beautifully decorated room which gave off all the elegant brunch vibes. There was some speeches, mine included, and we munched on a seriously delicious brunch. My favorite part was the french toast, ugh so goooood!
The wedding wrapped up with a dessert cart back in the courtyard outside along with cake. We took so many pictures, ate so much food and really just had such a fun morning! It officially ended with my sister Lauren, and her new husband Kyle, running through all the guests blowing bubbles in their faces!! And with that, we headed back to the hotel and took naps like the old people we are haha. We changed into some more casual clothes and decided to check out the historic district of Charleston.
Charleston is such a beautiful city with so much history as I learned that night. We walked past a whole bunch of really nice architecture and stores we definitely couldn’t afford anything in, on our way to Rainbow Row. Rainbow Row was so cool because you don’t often see so much color in cities and they were so beautifully pastel, it was really pretty! The day started getting away from us and we had a ghost tour scheduled for that night so we rushed to get a bite to eat and off to the tour we went.
If I’m being honest, I didn’t want to do the tour. I’m the world’s biggest fraidy cat when it comes to anything remotely scary, but somehow I convinced myself it’d be okay and so we did the tour. Our tour guide was super cool! He was an amazing story teller and shared a lot of Charleston history along with the spooky ghost stories. The worst part for me, was standing in the middle of a graveyard in darkness hearing the story of the dead guy I was standing over...yeah not great. Haha but in all honesty it was pretty cool and I’m happy I did it! I was honestly so tired, but we had to head to a bar for at least one drink to say we did it, so we went to a bar not far from our hotel and all got one cocktail before heading to bed.
So the wedding was over that means the trip was over right? Oh heck no. My whole family, and some others were headed straight for Hilton Head Island to finish out the week at the beach. Now, my friends and I couldn’t stay the entire week, actually one of us was headed to England the very next day, so on Tuesday we drove there bright and early to make the most of it! It was of course raining that day but we had so much fun! We shopped, visited the iconic Salty Dog Cafe, got a few minutes in at the beach between rain and ended the night with dinner with the family.
And just like that, the next morning we were all packed up and heading back to New Jersey. We were so sad the weekend we anticipated for so long was coming to an end, but decided that just meant we had to go back one day to check out everything we missed! I don’t think we could’ve had a better trip if we tried, it was SO MUCH FUN. Thank you to my parents for all the work they put in to making it amazing for everyone and we can’t forget the whole reason we were down there (which I maybe sometimes did…) celebrating Lauren and Kyle! Congratulations guys, you’ve been dating so long not much has changed but it’s cool that you’re married now! This weekend was definitely one that I’ll cherish forever.
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