Hilton Head Weddings | Hilton Head Bridal Show - the Destination Wedding Guide for Hilton Head Island, SC

BY ROBYN PASSANTE • PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROB KAUFMAN

The last time Charlotte resident Jared Weiner was in town, he refused to read this magazine.

“I had to completely avoid Hilton Head Monthly when we got to Hilton Head the week before our wedding, becauseI knew there was a picture of Jacquilyn in her dress in there,” said Jared, who married Jacquilyn Brown on June 25 under the Liberty Oak in Harbour Town. “But I was good. I didn’t peek.”

Jared and Jacquilyn, winners of Monthly’s 2010 Bridal Photo Contest.

Jared and Jacquilyn, winners of Monthly’s 2010 bridal photo contest, say their nuptials turned out as picture-perfect as that dress-revealing engagement photo we featured in June. And both bride and groom say the most memorable moment of the day was the very first.

“The best part of the day was the start of the ceremony, and walking down the aisle with my brother,” said Jacquilyn, a graduate of Hilton Head Preparatory School. Her father, John Brown, had passed away after a long illness in 2009, a week after Jared had asked for his daughter’s hand in marriage. So Jacquilyn’s brother, John Brown Jr., stepped up.

“I started crying when I saw her,” Jared said. “I just felt overwhelmed with emotion. She just looked so beautiful.” Jacquilyn wore a couture silk ivory ball gown by Eve of Milady and carried a bouquet of purple roses and ivory magnolias created by A Floral Affair.

The Rev. Jerry Kramer of Lowcountry Presbyterian Church presided over the ceremony, which included the lighting of a memorial candle to honor Jacquilyn’s dad. Afterward the whole party — which included 16 honor attendants and close to 150 guests — moved inside to the Champions Ballroom in The Sea Pines Resort to dine and dance the night away.

The couple’s first dance, a waltz to the Honeydrippers’ “Sea of Love,” was the only source of anxiety for Jared that day.

“She’s a dance teacher; I’m a P.E. teacher,” he said. They took dance lessons together to prepare for their dancing debut, but Jared said dancing with his bride in shorts was much different than dancing with her in a ball gown.

“I felt so much better after that, and then the night just flew by,” he said. Buffet stations were set up for dinner, and the couple opted for cupcakes from Sweet Carolina Cupcakes.

Hilton Head band Deas Guyz kept the dance floor full and the guests happy all night, the Weiners said. Jacquilyn showed a slideshow she’d prepared of photos of both bride and groom from childhood up to the present. And as her brother danced with her to Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” for what would have been the father-daughter dance, a picture of their father was displayed on the screen.

It was another poignant moment in a dreamcome-true day that fell into place, Jacquilyn said. “You trust all your ideas and what you want, and you hope that it looks the way that you had imagined it,” Jacquilyn said. “And it really did.”

SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
See Jacquilyn and Jared’s “fusion” album — complete with audio and video — at kaufmanphotography.com/weiner