Writer and friend Patrick Roscoe shares his thoughts on weddings, the South and THE INN AT PALMETTO BLUFF

A wedding brought us--my girlfriend Jillian and I--to The Inn at Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina. It’s a remarkable place and you should really go. But first some backstory.

I’m not a proponent of weddings, let alone weddings in South Carolina. Sure, you take pictures with old friends gone to seed and throw back shots that recall the awful Steely Dan record you bought at Tower Records to impress girls. But there’s also the drunken mother who kisses too close to the mouth, the awkward glances between ex lovers, and the burnt filet mignon. And no matter how despotic my efforts—I once wore lifts—I never catch the bouquet. So instead of researching where we were headed, I watched old Northern Exposure clips on You Tube. If you’re looking for a correlation between the South and Northern Exposure, there is none.

Our trip began inauspiciously. At LAX, a ragtag group of kids—uncanny facsimiles of The Goonies cast—had drunk their weight in Capri Sun and invented an exotic game: if you get slapped in the back by an opponent, you slap said opponent in the face and then scream. At last, a tired-looking businessman approached their parents—she was calmly reading Stieg Larsson, he was calmly chewing a Cinnabon—and aired his complaints. The following, heated argument took place:

Mr. Cinnabon: You telling me how to raise my kids?

Businessman: No, I’m politely asking that your kids shut the hell up.

Mr. Cinnabon: No one tells me how to raise my kids.

Businessman: Dammit, I’m not telling you how to raise them. I’m asking you to control them.

As the businessman rolled his Economist into a makeshift bat and the blathering father squished his pastry into dough, our flight mercifully boarded. American Airlines has never been more punctual!

We awoke in Savannah, Georgia. The airport resembles a Southern plantation save for the Pizza Hut and PGA Golf Store, and I had it in mind to ask someone where I could find a Southern Democrat. Instead, we shared a bag of Kettle Chips—breakfast—and picked up our rental car, whereupon we drove forty-five minutes north, past stately oak trees dripping with Spanish moss and tiny shanties beside the road. This was South Carolina’s low country, an area made famous by Pat Conroy’s Prince Of Tides (Nick Nolte never materialized out of the woods.) It’s breathtaking land, but what steals your breath most is its squalor: trailer parks, barefoot children, rusted car husks--The South that roads cut through but seldom acknowledges.

Then emerged Xanadu. Palmetto Bluff is an island roughly the size of Manhattan, with thick pine forests giving way to gurgling rivers and, eventually, the blue Atlantic. After entering the main gate and skirting a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course, we clattered over a bridge and into a town square. To our left were a post office, boutique shops and several restaurants; and to our right was The Inn, a two-story plantation house in front of which lay the ruins of a long since vacated mansion. Richard T. Wilson, a rich New York banker, had owned the property in the early 1900’s, and vestiges of his life still maintain their ageless beauty.

We checked in at The Inn. I couldn’t help noticing three gigantic fire pits outside the window. At night, visitors congregate around the pits and either dip marshmallows into the flames to make Smores, or drink a nightcap and stargaze from a nearby Adirondack chair. We’d do both that night, my scotch intake enhancing my ability to name star formations with drunken assuredness.

About the accommodations. There are fifty cottages at The Inn, and they’re bigger than our condo in Los Angeles. Each cottage has a fireplace, steam shower, and screened-in back porch, and two bikes lean on their kickstands outside. Our bike expeditions weren’t Tour de France-long, but we did a good amount of pedaling. There are year-round residences on Palmetto Bluff too, and we ignored “Private Road” signs to discover canopied streets and trails leading down to beaches. The highlight was a baby alligator lazily floating down a stream. On our drive back to the airport, our cab driver would tell us, “Even the small ones can bite.”

Before the wedding, we enjoyed summer-like weather at the pool. There are two pools at The Inn, and we chose the one nearest the ocean. There are also tennis courts, a golf course (as already mentioned), fishing charters, kayaks, a yoga studio, and a spa. But after too much sweet tea at the pool, I forswore all of these activities for a stand-up paddleboard, which I rented for eighteen dollars at the sport shop. I paddled across the water toward an exposed, crescent-shaped sandbar, on which I met three guys from Clemson University. They offered me a handful of pretzels and looked at my board curiously. The sport, it seems, has yet to make inroads in South Carolina. We chatted until one of them mentioned the tide was lowering. I accepted another handful of pretzels and paddled back.

As for the wedding, it was something out of a magazine. He looked great; she looked even better. Dinner was underneath a candlelit tent, mothers kept their kisses in the appropriate cheek region, and I eluded a burnt filet mignon by ordering the vegetarian entrée. We danced in an upstairs ballroom inside The Inn and snuck outside for the occasional Smores. Then we rode our bikes back to our cottage and slept for a good thirteen hours.

Am I now a proponent of weddings? Let’s just say I’m not subscribing to Bride Magazine. At least not yet.