My friend and I drove down most of the way on Friday night and stayed in a huge hotel room. \u00a0The bathroom alone was bigger than the office I share with 4 other people. \u00a0Huge. \u00a0 And the breakfast the next morning was great.<\/p>\n
We drove the rest of the way on Saturday and met up with my Former Co-Worker and his beautiful wife and their little girl. \u00a0The condo we stayed at was pretty nice on the surface – plenty of room, nice view, washer\/dryer, etc. \u00a0 But there were a lot of little things that were broken or damaged or didn’t work quite right that made us suspect that it had been a while since a\u00a0maintenance\u00a0crew had done a careful inspection. \u00a0Not enough to disrupt the trip, but just a little… off.<\/p>\n
The walk to the beach was only a few minutes – not bad even when loaded up with all the usual beach gear – though a little long when bleeding from a Kraken attack.<\/p>\n
The island itself was…\u00a0pretentious. \u00a0All the business signs were small and tasteful – which made finding anything a chore. Some areas were gated and required a fee to even drive on that part of the island. \u00a0Others would fine you for straying off the approved driving paths. It made the island pretty, but felt a little “better than thou” \u00a0The worst was the gatepass – a story that ties into the story of the wedding.<\/p>\n
See, my friend’s friend was getting married and she rearranged her Hilton Head Island wedding to\u00a0accommodate\u00a0when he was going to be there. \u00a0So, we got wrapped in the trials and tribulations of the least organized bride ever. \u00a0 She invited us out to dinner the night before the wedding, but since this was after the\u00a0rehearsal\u00a0dinner, we wisely chose to eat beforehand. \u00a0My friend and I were pretty much ‘on call’ waiting to hear back from her about dinner and it didn’t happen until 9:00. We split a dessert while the rest of the crew ate and called it a night when the jovial server (who called herself Aunt Pam), finally decided to bring the checks around.<\/p>\n
The wedding was supposed to start at 7:00 the next day and we had been asked to arrive at 6:30 – and to dress in white shirts, black pants, and black shoes. \u00a0Now, I balked a little at that – who wants to bring dress clothes on vacation? – but we were ready to go in plenty of time and headed out.<\/p>\n
And got stopped at the gate. \u00a0No guest pass, you see. \u00a0We drove around this loop looking for the main gate, getting madder by the moment at the lack of signs and found another gate. \u00a0No good, we were turned away and given vague directions. \u00a0Finally found the well hidden main gate and security office and asked for a pass. \u00a0We had to give the address, confirm that it was rental property, and indicate how long we were going to be there before getting a guest pass for the evening. \u00a0I joked to my friend that the way we were dressed suggested that we might be the infamous “bus boy bandits” out for another raid.<\/p>\n
Finally got to the wedding site and it wasn’t until 7:30 before things started. \u00a0And… it was a very nice ceremony. \u00a0The officiator was well spoken and the backyard venue with the lagoon was pretty. \u00a0My friend and I \u00a0– in our matching outfits \u00a0– were apparently the only ones that got the memo. \u00a0We were also the only guests, everyone else was in the wedding – including the brother-in-law of the bride in sneakers and a nice bowling shirt. \u00a0(Really? Yes, really.)<\/p>\n
After the wedding it was out to dinner at the Old Oyster Factory\u00a0restaurant. We had eaten beforehand and it was a good thing, the food was crazy expensive. \u00a0Two\u00a0appetizers\u00a0and drinks were over $40.00. \u00a0\u00a0 The guy sitting next to me got a meal that I’m sure would have require a second mortgage if I’d ordered it. \u00a0It was after 10:30 before we got out of there and made our way back to the condo. \u00a0Everyone was really nice and it was an okay – if really long evening. \u00a0 Oh, and the one kid our table for dinner kept requesting origami and then kept crumpling them or unfolding them. \u00a0I was able to salvage a few and I know they don’t last, but sheesh! Enjoy them for a few minutes before you savage them, okay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend and I drove down most of the way on Friday night and stayed in a huge hotel room. \u00a0The bathroom alone was bigger than the office I share with 4 other people. \u00a0Huge. \u00a0 And the breakfast the next morning was great. We drove the rest of the way on Saturday and met […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}