Tie Your Own Knot

Ideas abound to help put your signature on the big event.

excerpt: Tradition with a twist
Some brides are reluctant to engage help in personalizing their affair, but wedding planners are fabulous resources for ensuring your event reflects your style and passions. Michele Sharpe choose Ooh! Events in Mount Pleasant to add unexpected touches to her reception at a fishing cottage in Bluffton.
"This bride had a gift of pulling out people's talents, "says event planner Lisa Thomas. "She gave an overall feeling of what she wanted and then let us come up with ideas. When people do this they always get more than they imagine."
Starting with the couple's love of the outdoors and a Lowcountry theme of marsh grass, Lisa and her staff went to work to make sure the bride's vision would come together in an upscale event with a rustic patina. Vintage wine tables were set in long rows and adorned with antique medicine bottles repurposed as bud vases. LIghting on the screened porch included hundreds of votives as well as large lanterns with burlap shades. The cake was nestled amid horsetail, reeds and grasses on sliced logs that served as a cake stand.
Small chandeliers were hung on branches of mossy oaks as the rhythms of Gullah singers echoed over the creek. As a final touch, an old red wheelbarrow filled with sand held dozens of sparklers. Friends and family encircled the couple with a festive arch of light as the newlyweds bid farewell and depoarted in a boat. "When you hire creative people," says Thomas, "point them in a direction and let them work their magic."