Golden Beginning



WRITER CREDIT: 
PHOTOGRAPHER CREDIT: 
Golden Beginning | Lawton Cooper Ginn & Eric Yon; November 8, 2008, French Huguenot Church & Carolina Yacht Club (South Property)

Lawton Cooper Ginn is a girl who’s always known what she wants, including the timing of her wedding. “Ever since I was five,” she says, “I’ve wanted to get married in November.” So when high school sweetheart Eric Yon proposed at her childhood home on Queen Street two weeks after she graduated from the College of Charleston, Lawton never second-guessed autumnal nuptials. As the daughter of Ginn Resorts owner Edward Robert Ginn, III, she could have wed at any number of luxury properties from Vermont to the Bahamas, but Lawton already had the perfect city picked out. “I’m a Charleston girl at heart,” she says. “I could never get married anywhere else.” With her mother’s house across the street from the circa-1845 French Huguenot Church, the ceremony location was a given. And with two ministers—one of whom was Eric’s brother-in-law—presiding over the “I dos,” she says “it was so intimate and personal.” Afterward, guests made their way to the Carolina Yacht Club where Soirée’s Tara Guérard and Kate Badger Little had spent a week transforming the South Property into a vision of ivory, gold, and plum. When all was said and done, Lawton and Eric, along with their 300-plus guests, were welcomed into a series of elegant chambers: first came a cocktail lounge, next a romantic dining room, and last, a secret late-night “club” that everyone first learned of over dinner. “They couldn’t have done it any better,” says Lawton. “It was exactly what I wanted.”

Wedding design by Tara Guerard; cake: Wedding Cakes by Jim Smeal; ceremony location: French Huguenot Church; cigars: Coastal Cigars; event coordination, design, & florals: Soirée by Tara Guérard; rentals: Snyder Event Rentals; music: The Swinging Medallions and Plane Jane, East Coast Entertainment. Printed Materials: The Lettered Olive Reception location & catering: Carolina Yacht Club Transportation: Absolutely Charleston

The Wedding Row

October 23 2018
If how they saved their wedding foretells how they’ll live their marriage, we have every confidence in Jess and Geno. (And yoo-hoo to you other hurricane season brides, listen up extra close.) The...

October 22 2018
The Wedding Row: Tell us about how you two met. Kathryn: Hunter and I met through mutual friends in the fall of 2011 at a bar called Town Hall in Washington D.C. It was the “Clemson bar”...

October 19 2018
With couples getting anointed “Mr. and Mrs.” every weekend in the myriad nooks and crannies of Magnolia Plantation & Gardens, the site’s seen more than its fair share of wedding day décor. And as...

October 18 2018
Becca and Tanner started dating when she was at Sweetbriar College and he was at Hampden Sidney College. Seven years after they started dating, they were happily ensconced in Charleston while he...

October 17 2018
TWR: Where did you meet? Madison: At work. A role in my job “allowed” me to go to Paul’s desk every day. Four months of professional interaction and happy hours led to us dating. TWR: When did you...

October 16 2018
If you’re a bride-to-be whose addicted to happily ever after stories; if you’re a romantic looking for some fuel to add to your hope tank; or if you have a friend who falls into that category (and...

October 15 2018
Katie and Mike met through work (she was the chief of staff for the Republican National Congress and he was her predecessor), so it made sense that his proposal was touched by politics as well,...

October 12 2018
Wimberly Fair not only has one of the coolest names (yep, it’s her real moniker) in the wedding world, she’s also one of Charleston’s biggest, most whimsical talents. Today she shares about the...