Saturday turned out to be a sparklingly beautiful fall day in Pawleys Island, an idyllic spot for an early fall wedding in South Carolina, sandwiched between the Atlantic oceanfront and expansive marshland that typify the state’s coastal beauty.
But the perfect wedding day almost didn’t come together for two families who traveled to the island for nuptial festivities that almost got derailed by Hurricane Ian’s landfall and aftermath.
Mary Lord and her family traveled to Pawleys Island from Fort Worth, Texas, for the Saturday wedding of her son, Eric.
AJ McCullough’s family came from Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to see her daughter, Monroe, walk down the aisle as the bride.
The families had been staying in rental houses across the street from one another on Pawleys Island, about 72 miles (116 kilometers) up South Carolina’s coast from Charleston.
And then the storm hit.
Ian was a Category 1 storm when it came ashore near Georgetown, about 13 miles from Pawleys. Hours of wind and rain battered the beach town, whipping surf reportedly as high as 25 feet (7.6 meters) that washed over the town’s iconic pier, strewing its pylons along the shoreline and pushing them up to beachfront properties.
