Pre-Wedding Story #1:
I arrived in Beaufort two days before Hurricane Matthew hit the U.S. east coast, both to help Bryan get his mother to stay with her sister in Columbia and to get last-minute wedding stuff accomplished that could be done only in South Carolina. On the day I drove in, one of our sweet kitty cats died unexpectedly and without warning. We didn't have much time to grieve because we were monitoring the hurricane and had decided to stick it out. It was downgraded to a weakened category 2, but it still required running around getting hurricane supplies because we knew we would lose power.
Had the hurricane not arrived, we would have been getting haircuts, pedicures, wedding clothing alterations, and cats put into pet boarding places, but because everything was closed (or sustained hurricane damage), we had no choice but to put the surviving cat into a cat carrier, pack our stuff up during daylight hours, and then get on the road to drop both mother and cat with aunt in Columbia.
Holy crap. On the day after the hurricane, none of the stores in Beaufort were open - no power - but his mother was almost out of adult diapers, so an emergency run was in order. While I drove, I listened to a National Public Radio station out of Savannah that gave interstate updates. Apparently you could drive out of county but no one was allowed back in because of road debris. I went to Publix on Lady's Island, about 10 minutes away, and they were running the store on a generator. Thank God I was there early with other rational shoppers: by the time I'd stood in line with groceries, there were cops at the end of every single cash register check-out, and the assistant store manager was holding back a crowd outside that stretched half-way down the parking lot. I was able to get diapers, apples, bananas, frozen sausage biscuits, and some cat food.
It was like living the reverse of an Eagles song in a banana republic: you could leave but you couldn't come back in, and then you got to endure angry hungry crowds in grocery store parking lots.
We left two days after the hurricane, got his mom to Columbia, spent the night in eastern Tennessee, and then came in to Nashville on Tuesday before the wedding...and little did we know that we left one hurricane only to enter another: Hurricane Wedding.
I am so sorry about your kitty. Poor babe.
And I'm sorry all this stress happened, but by the pictures, you would never know a thing wasn't anything but perfect.