On Cloud Nine | What does a gurney have to do with a wedding this posh? Let’s just say that love can take the oddest twists and turns rolling toward happily ever after
October 14, 2017 • Second Presbyterian Church & Lowndes Grove Plantation
When Kristian Perks was in the hospital recuperating from shoulder surgery and hopped up on meds, he finally found the nerve to text his one-time high school crush, Mallory Severs. It was a rather peculiar message: a selfie from his gurney accompanied by absolutely no explanation. “I think the medication finally gave him the courage to make a move,” says Mallory. Kristian’s special brand of boldness was just what the doctor ordered, though, and it led to a six-year long courtship for the two who met growing up in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Most of their six years of dating were spent as road warriors, alternating weekends between Auburn, Alabama (where she was in school), and Chapel Hill, North Carolina (where he was in school), then back and forth from Charleston to Charlotte after they’d graduated. Holidays were spent traipsing through the Caribbean, visiting Kristian’s family throughout Europe, and relaxing at Mallory’s family’s Isle of Palms vacation home.
Then one day in 2016, Mallory found herself posing at Lowndes Grove Plantation for a work head shot. (At the time she was a planner at Charleston’s Sweetgrass Social Event & Design where her sister, Meredith Severs Tanton, is lead coordinator.) Aaron Osteen of Aaron & Jillian Photography suggested Mallory spin around to get the hair out of her face. “I thought it was odd,” she tells us, “but as soon as I spun around, there was Kristian on one knee. He scared me to the point I screamed! I had no idea he was in Charleston and definitely didn’t expect him to be on one knee behind me during a photo shoot.”
Once she recovered, the coordinating commenced. Since Mallory had always wanted to wed at Lowndes Grove, she followed Kristian’s proposal there with a wedding on-site. The bride-to-be of course teamed with Meredith, a wise move, considering her big sister had reserved the venue a year and a half prior to the Big Ask (she had a hunch). From there, Mallory’s dream of bringing West Coast flair to the East Coast via a vineyard-inspired celebration came together flawlessly. Proving that two heads are better than one (“Kristian gave his opinion but was a bit outnumbered,” Mallory says), the siblings focused on the spacious main lawn. There, they erected wooden arbors and decked them with cascading greenery and floral clusters to mimic a California winery. With lavishly set tables beneath and ritzy chandeliers hung from above, a magical al fresco reception was spirited into reality.
“Sitting underneath that great structure right as the sun was setting … I was in awe,” says Mallory. “Other than the ceremony, that was the most memorable moment.”
We couldn’t come up with a better love story than Taylor and Jonathan’s if we tried. They met while she was in dental school and he was completing his medical residency. (She’s a dentist, he’s a...
Who doesn’t have a soft spot for college sweethearts? Liz and John met their sophomore year at Providence College in Rhode Island, not knowing that nine years later John would propose on the very...
Oh my gosh is he a good guy! After meeting at work (at the Daniel Island Club), Ginny says she didn’t even know she was on her first date with Daniel when he offered to spend an afternoon helping her...
OK. So these two New Yorkers are kind of a big deal (she’s a VP at a hedge fund group and former account head at the Olgivy agency with an MBA and he’s a marketing director at a Big Apple firm and...
We want to be invited to *that* New Year’s Eve party! We’re talking about the one where Mount Pleasant native Bree met Mobile, Alabama-born Josh, and the two hit it off enough for us to be talking...
Lanier and Luke met in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, during a Friendsgiving supper one November along with some 30 pals. That run-in led to a friendship that turned into a romance and by 2017, the two were...
O.M.G. You are so going to love these two! For starters, they tricked—yes, tricked—their families into a shared Thanksgiving vacation in Charleston that turned into a surprise wedding for them and...
We hate to do this to you, but we have to tell you some things about bride Sarah Grace that might very well intimidate you (like it did us). Yes, yes, yes, she and her sweetheart Martin (aka “Bug”)...
