Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively’s Wedding in South Carolina, 2012
A Marchesa gown embroidered in rose gold, Florence Welch singing under the lights, and a venue the couple later said they deeply regretted. A beautiful wedding, and a lesson in choosing where to marry.
When Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds married in September 2012, the wedding looked, in every published photograph, like a Southern idyll: a white tent, blush and rose gold, and a performance by Florence Welch. It was covered exclusively and lavishly by Martha Stewart Weddings. The setting, however, was Boone Hall, a former plantation, and in the years that followed the couple came to regard that choice as a serious mistake and said so publicly. Both parts of the story belong in any account of it.
| At a glance | |
|---|---|
| Date | Sunday, September 9, 2012 |
| Place (ceremony) | Boone Hall, Mount Pleasant, South Carolina |
| Reception | On the Boone Hall grounds |
| The dress (designer) | Marchesa (Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig) |
| Guests | About 60, including Lively’s Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants co-stars America Ferrera, Alexis Bledel and Amber Tamblyn |
The couple
Lively and Reynolds met as co-stars on Green Lantern (2011) and had been linked for about a year when they married. It was Lively’s first marriage; Reynolds had previously been married to the actress Scarlett Johansson. Their representatives had not confirmed the wedding when the first reports of it appeared.
The ceremony
The wedding was held on the grounds of Boone Hall, outside Charleston, with a small guest list of family and close friends. Among those reported present were three of Lively’s co-stars from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, as well as several of the people who had made the day: the designer Georgina Chapman, the shoe designer Christian Louboutin and the jeweler Lorraine Schwartz, who made the wedding bands. Reynolds wore a suit made for him by Burberry, designed by Christopher Bailey, with custom leather suspenders.
The dress
Lively’s gown was a custom design by Marchesa’s founders, Georgina Chapman and Keren Craig: a hand-draped silk tulle bodice with custom crystal and rose gold embroidery over a full tulle skirt. Her shoes were custom Christian Louboutins, and her bouquet mixed pink and white flowers with petals dipped in rose-gold glitter. Her bridesmaids wore blush silk chiffon with crystal embroidery.
The dress has one detail that was never planned. As Lively later told Vogue, a sparkler at the reception left a burn mark on the front of the skirt. She was heartbroken, she said, until her husband pointed out that it would always remind her of Florence Welch singing under the sparklers. “Now that’s my favorite part of the dress,” she said. For more of the gowns that shaped modern bridal style, see our guide to celebrity wedding dresses.
The reception
Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine sang three songs after the ceremony. The wedding cake was vanilla and sour cream with peach preserves, surrounded by a table of small desserts, from fruit tarts and jellies to s’mores bars. The styling was shared in detail in the winter 2012 issue of Martha Stewart Weddings.
The venue, and the apology
Boone Hall is a former plantation. Its grounds include a row of cabins that once housed enslaved people. Criticism of the couple’s choice grew in the years after the wedding, resurfacing sharply in 2018, and in 2019 Pinterest and The Knot said they would stop promoting plantation weddings.
In 2020, after the killing of George Floyd, the couple posted a statement acknowledging their past ignorance of systemic racism and donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund; Reynolds also started the Group Effort Initiative, which gives people from underrepresented groups paid experience on film sets. That August, in an interview with Fast Company, he addressed the wedding directly. “What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest,” he said. “What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy.” He called it “impossible to reconcile,” said the couple had since “got married again at home,” and added: “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for.”
Why it mattered
The Lively–Reynolds wedding showed, first, how a single magazine exclusive could define a look: blush and rose gold, glittered petals and a romantic embroidered gown, all photographed in soft Southern light. It is now remembered at least as much for the second lesson, that where you marry is part of what your wedding says, and that the history of a place deserves the same attention as its views.
Borrow the idea
Research your venue’s history. Ask the venue directly how it presents its past, read its own website and local historical sources, and consider how guests of every background will feel there. Our guide to how to plan a wedding covers venue questions.
Use one metallic, sparingly. Rose gold in embroidery, on bouquet petals or on the cake is warm and flattering with blush and ivory; keep everything else simple. See choosing your wedding colors.
Plan for sparklers. If you’re planning a sparkler send-off, check the venue’s rules, hand out long-burning sparklers with buckets of sand nearby, and keep the dress at arm’s length.
Ask a musician friend for one song. A single live performance at the reception can be the most remembered moment of the night. Our reception song library has ideas.
Written and edited by the Today’s Weddings editors. How we research and check what we publish is set out in our editorial standards. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
