High-Low Pairings and Creative Whimsy Make a Charleston Wedding Shine

Losing an hour when clocks “fall back” in October is always brutal—especially if you’re a time-crunched bride. Hayley Price White, however, was rested, calm, and supremely happy. The only thing stressing her was whether the shuttle from the Friday afternoon rehearsal in downtown Charleston would get to the rehearsal dinner venue before sunset. “Can we please, please make it in time?” she implored the bus driver. Because at Bowens Island, watching the magenta sun melt over the Folly River is the whole point. “We got there, with an hour to spare,” she says.

Actually, the showstopper sunset was only part of the reason Hayley and her now-husband, Jack, chose the iconic oyster shack to kick off their wedding weekend. An Atlanta native, Hayley had moved to Charleston after studying art and business at Washington & Lee. It was here in the Holy City that she began her career as an artist and online gallery entrepreneur, and it was 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 night with a formal reception at the Gibbes Museum on Saturday, they curated a weekend that in turn felt representative of Charleston. Or as Hayley puts 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 help of Jack’s mom and of wedding planner Haley Kelly, they set about “jazzing up” Bowens’ salty rawness with lights on the exposed beams and pastel-hued florals and linens, but not a heavy hand. “We really wanted the space—the marsh and the views—to speak for itself,” Hayley says. While the decor may have been spare, the bride’s rehearsal dress was all flair. She found the fun, flouncy number with cascading ruffles at a sample sale and bought it despite 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 wedding dress was a similar impulse buy, with an assist from her own mom. Shortly after the couple got engaged, her mother, an Atlanta-based interior designer, called to say she’d seen a dress in the window at Britt Wood’s BW Designs. “I know it’s your wedding dress,” her mother said. Sure enough, BW Designs was their third stop when Hayley was in town on a dress-buying mission, and she had the same immediate reaction. “Please take it out of the window,” she asked upon walking in 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 were bridesmaids for the Catholic ceremony at St. Mary of the Annunciation, while a group of friends dressed in varying shades of sage greens and blues rounded out the unofficial wedding party.

To fill a gap between the late-afternoon ceremony and cocktail hour under the Gibbes rotunda, the couple shared suggestions of their favorite 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 perfect reception venue for an artist—guests mingled in the galleries while aproned oyster shuckers circulated about, “a fun Charlestonesque nod, but elevated,” she says. Dinner, provided by Cru Catering, and dancing followed in the Gibbes courtyard, where florals by Blossom Bay Design complimented tablescapes anchored by fabric Hayley’s mother had found 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 keeps those pillows in her new home in Beaufort, South Carolina, where she and Jack recently moved.

Their wedding cake was crowned with Hayley’s parents’ own sugar-flower cake topper, which had miraculously survived thirty-three years, while 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 kept 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 recent return trip to Bowens offered further proof that their wedding left a lasting Lowcountry impression. During the rehearsal dinner, the couple had added their own Sharpie-inscribed graffiti to the well-inked walls, so they went to check if it’d been scribbled over yet. Hayley loves Jack is still there.