Thousands of weddings each year choose the “Holy City” as the backdrop for their nuptials, bringing dozens of their guests into Charleston to enjoy all there is to offer. As a wedding guest, it can be hard to really experience a city while juggling wedding itineraries, but it’s not impossible! Here’s how we managed to pack everything into one weekend!
Weddings are typically on Saturdays (sometimes Sundays, sometimes any other day of the week when venue rental prices are discounted), and then of course there are usually group activities like rehearsal dinners taking up Friday evening. This can seem like such a bummer when you want to try all of the best spots for dinner, especially in a city like Charleston where there is an extensive amount of acclaimed restaurants. Don’t fret! There is still plenty of time to try a few of the places you’ve been eyeing.
Utilize an Extra Night
Yes, an extra night in a hotel just adds to the expenses of the trip, but it’s worth it to get a jump start on exploring your surroundings. That way, your travel time doesn’t eat up half of your day on Friday. So plan to get there a night early and aim for an afternoon arrival so the day isn’t completely lost.
We drove down to Charleston from New Jersey (thanks to COVID), and arrived Thursday evening. After settling in at the hotel, we stopped by to greet the bride and groom and then headed into downtown Charleston for dinner. One of the places I’d heard rave reviews from and desperately wanted to try was Leon’s Oyster Shop. It was the perfect atmosphere for a few groggy travelers, and the food was just absolutely phenomenal.
Leon’s might just be the perfect first meal in Charleston, because it combines all of the best aspects of the city: eclectic decor, delicious and creative cocktails, and the best of southern coastal cuisine. The restaurant is in what used to be an auto shop, but has been renovated into a swanky hotspot for locals and tourists alike. Despite the name, Leon’s is supposedly known for the fried chicken, so of course that is what we ordered. (Oysters are also a huge staple in Charleston and Leon’s are also apparently very good).
For appetizers we ordered fried clam strips (amazing) and peel-and-eat-shrimp (also very good), and a yummy Asian-fusion salad. Their cocktail menu included frozen rosé (frozé) and frozen gin & tonic, which I of course had to try. Since there were four of us and we all agreed that we wanted to try the fried chicken, we decided on the full chicken platter, which came with two sides. We chose the cucumber salad and the scalloped potatoes. Let me just say that I could eat that cucumber salad every day of my life and I would never get tired of it. It was SO GOOD, marinated in sesame oil, champagne vinegar, and shiso and topped with sesame seeds. One of the highlights of the night and it’s not even one of the iconic dishes from there!
Now, the fried chicken might have been the best I have ever tasted, which is exactly why this is a perfect first stop on the Charleston restaurant scene. It was crispy, and juicy, albeit a little salty, but had hints of Old Bay seasoning and was cooked to absolute perfection. The chicken came with sauces on the side, but I was honestly too distracted by the deliciousness of the bird to even bother. I could have probably eaten the whole thing myself.
(We weren’t all that starving, and our appetizers helped to fill us up, so the whole chicken was ideal for us. If your group is especially hungry, I’m not sure the whole chicken platter would satisfy everyone so take note while ordering. There’s nothing wrong with leftover fried chicken as a midnight snack).
So when you come to Charleston a night early, take advantage and head right to Leon’s for the perfect welcome feast.
Get an Early Start
If you’re going to arrive a whole night early, you might as well make the most of your first full day and get started at the crack of dawn. Okay, so you don’t need to get started that early in the morning, but definitely get up and at ‘em so you have the whole day to explore!
Charleston is actually a pretty small city, so I would recommend either a self-guided walking tour or a self-guided bike tour. While I’m sure there are tons of options for guided tours, the self-guided aspect gives you the freedom to skip things you aren’t interested in, spend more time at your favorite places, and stop whenever you want to get a bite to eat or cool off with a cocktail. We chose to embark upon a self-guided walking tour, led by my older brother Mikey, who is somewhat of a Charleston regular since his girlfriend Ashley lives there for medical school (if either of you are reading this, hi Mikey & Ashley!).
If biking is more your thing, the “Holy Spokes” bikes all over the city are a great option. They work similar to Citi Bikes or Bird Scooters or any bike sharing service, where you can walk up to any available bike at one of the designated racks and rent it through an app. You can then drop them off at any other rack across the city, or even leave it on a sidewalk somewhere. They have self-locking mechanisms controlled by the app, so you can leave it outside of a restaurant or attraction without worrying about fumbling with a bike lock. It’s super easy and a great option for exploring!
We parked at Ashley’s house, right by the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), and strolled all the way down Rutledge Avenue, passing gorgeous historic homes and Colonial Park, where there’s a nice little pond. (If you’re a fan of Bravo’s Southern Charm TV show, Patricia Altschul’s house is right on Rutledge Ave!)
We walked all the way down to the water, and turned to head towards the Battery. After a few hours of walking in the warm weather, we all needed a bathroom break, so we walked from the Battery up Meeting Street and stopped at Charleston City Hall to use the nice and clean public restrooms. On the way up Meeting Street, we passed quite a few famous old houses, such as the Williams House, which you can tour.
After our bathroom stop, we walked down Broad Street heading east towards the waterfront and took another stop at the Blind Tiger Pub. The gorgeous back patio is a popular spot for downtown bar-goers in the evening, but we were there right before lunchtime to grab a snack and a cocktail. The avocado toast was surprisingly delicious and one of the best things I ate the whole weekend, which I wasn’t expecting from a dive-bar sort of place. There are rumors that the place is haunted, so be sure to ask a manager about some ghost stories, and definitely check out the back patio.
Once we had a little fuel to keep going, we made it to the end of broad street and turned back south, heading along the water back to the Battery. Right below Broad Street is Rainbow Row, a beautiful collection of brightly-colored historic homes that are an Instagram picture waiting to happen.
We continued down East Bay Street until we got all the way back down to the Battery. It was a gorgeous walk along the water where locals and tourists all enjoy the views and the wide pedestrian path. We turned around and back-tracked along the water until we got to the Waterfront Park.
Waterfront Park is a really lovely shaded park that contains another Charleston icon: the Pineapple Fountain. In southern culture, pineapples represent hospitality, so what better way to welcome guests to your city than to have a great big pineapple fountain? The fountain is a great photo spot, and you can even kick off your shoes and wade in the water on a hot day.
Along the water and up a little farther is Fleet Landing, a restaurant that once served as the home of the Cooper River Ferry and as a building for the Navy, before being renovated and converted by a local who had always had his eye on it. Our group enjoyed a filling lunch of seafood (and yes, more cocktails) while gazing at views of the water. The open-air building is a really cool setting for such a bustling restaurant, and the food was all delicious, especially the stuffed hushpuppies.
Bellies full, it was time to continue our tour. From Fleet Landing, we navigated our way to King Street, the popular area of downtown Charleston that’s filled with tons of great shopping and even more restaurants. It’s the perfect area to window-shop, people-watch, and experience the heart of the city. If you’re looking for a sweet treat, stop at Off-Track Ice Cream, right off of King Street, for a break and to cool down.
Off-Track had so many great flavors that it was hard to choose which to order! They even had a good amount of vegan options, and I went with the vegan brown sugar oat milk & cookies flavor, which turned out to be so creamy and satisfying that you wouldn’t even be able to tell it was vegan. The shop itself is really cute and charming, and has touches of exposed brick along with the more modern design elements.
Once you have a nice cool-down with your ice cream, you can continue your stroll up King Street. We were headed back towards our car and made a detour to see the gorgeous College of Charleston campus. It has all of the old charm you would expect, complete with Spanish moss dangling from the trees and paved brick pathways winding around all of the historic buildings.
Again, Charleston is a pretty small city and very easy to wander around in a day and make it back to your hotel in time to get ready for the rehearsal dinner. It would take you years to see the sheer amount of restaurants and shops in the city, but you can get a pretty good feel for everything in one short day. Just remember to pack your walking shoes!
Here's a rough map of our self-guided walking tour:
Venture Outside of Downtown
Since Saturday is the wedding day, you don’t want to make any big or extensive plans, so it’s good to pick a smaller activity so you can be back at your hotel with enough time for primping and getting dressed. That is exactly why we chose to drive through Mount Pleasant and Sullivan’s Island on Saturday morning.
While there are plenty of things to see and do in downtown Charleston, there are so many charming areas right outside of the city! Mount Pleasant is just across the Ravenel Bridge, and was one of the best spots we checked out. There were tons of little breakfast spots, and we even passed by NICO, a restaurant owned by the family of one of the cast members of Southern Charm.
I always do my research before visiting anywhere, so I knew that the Vintage Coffee Cafe would be the perfect spot to get breakfast. Probably only 15 or 20 minutes from the city, this adorable little place has some of the yummiest food and the cutest atmosphere.
We chowed down on acai bowls, avocado toast, gourmet breakfast sandwiches, and vegan breakfast burritos while sipping our pumpkin spice lattes with oat milk. It all sounds very ~trendy~, but these things are trendy for a reason: because they’re GOOD. We all agreed it was possibly the best thing we’d had all weekend (a close contender with Leon’s cucumber salad and fried chicken), and we became obsessed with the adorable charm of the property.
There was a cute back garden filled with picnic tables, an old truck-turned-playground for kids, twinkly lights overhead, and a fire-pit for colder weather. They shared this back lot with a little pizza shack, which probably dominates the scene after brunch hour is over. The compound is definitely worth a stop, whether it’s for Vintage Coffee Cafe or Coastal Crust Pizza.
Sullivan’s Island, one of the most popular beach towns, was a short drive from the coffee shop, and had tons of adorable real estate to look at. Some might find it to be a boring activity, but we couldn’t get enough of gawking at the perfect beach-side cottages. It was a bit too chilly of a day for actual beach-going, but we parked along one of the residential streets so we could walk down the boardwalk and take a peek. We almost instantly fell in love with the cute little beach town, and went home looking up properties for sale.
Of course the most important part to any wedding weekend is celebrating the wedding with family and friends, and we had a lovely time. Just know that it’s not impossible to make the most out of a city during a wedding trip, as long as you plan ahead. (It also helps if you’re not actually in the wedding because then you have far less obligations). I definitely feel like I need a return trip to Charleston to really see and do everything on my list, but the express version was overall very satisfying. If you’re traveling for a wedding or any other reason any time soon, please remember to be safe & wear your mask!
To read about my weekend as a wedding guest in Sedona, AZ, click here.
Pin this for later:
Comentários