La Dolce Vita Meets Southern Charm at This Charleston Wedding

Anna Mack and her now-husband Ben Pardee’s love story began on the cobblestone streets of Florence, Italy–the same exact place where her parents had met almost 40 years before. In a plot twist most wouldn’t believe if Hollywood had scripted it, Anna’s mother was destined to meet her Ben while studying abroad, and so was she.

“It was September, and after we’d been in Florence for a couple days, my friend Eleni told me about this guy that she went to high school with and how she thought we were going to hit it off,” Anna, who is now a producer for the Broadway production company behind Chicago, Waitress, and Finding Neverland, recalls. “Not looking for a relationship at the time and coming off my previous semester abroad in London, meeting someone was not top of mind when I arrived in Italy!”

But Ben, who is a product manager for Condé Nast Traveler, captured Anna’s attention from the very beginning. “When we met, we shook hands, and he smiled, flashed those gorgeous baby blues, and it was right then and there that I was very intrigued,” she recalls. The two started seeing each other in Italy, and when it came time to return to their respective schools at the end of the semester, they stayed in touch and continued to date long distance throughout their senior years in college.

Ultimately, they both moved to New York, and after a seven-year courtship, Ben proposed in September of 2020 over a surprise picnic dinner on the roof of their Brooklyn apartment. “It felt like we were the only two people in the world overlooking the city that we love and that had been through so much pain during the previous six months of the pandemic,” Anna remembers. “We soaked it all up as the sun drifted down below the Hudson River and spent the rest of the evening FaceTiming family and friends.”

After much debate about the ideal time to get married—taking the ongoing pandemic into account—the two set a date of April 23, 2022. From the start, Anna knew she wanted to marry in her hometown of Charleston, South Carolina, and her goal was to show her guests an authentic experience. “It meant a lot to us to stick with local vendors who my family has worked with for years,” she explains. “The venue was also practically pre-decided as my mother has worked at the Gibbes Museum of Art for over 30 years, eventually rising to the position of curator of collections and then executive director.”

An “al fresco, Italianate garden party with Southern flair” is what Anna imagined as the wedding aesthetic, and she turned to Augusta Cole, who has offices in New York and Charleston, to help her execute on this vision. “Lush greens, yellows, and blues were the colors that I focused on, so that the natural beauty of spring in Charleston could shine through,” Anna says. “I wanted the uniqueness of the locations of our wedding to speak for themselves—from the church I’ve always attended, to the museum where my mom has worked for most of her life. When it came to our after-party, there was really only one place to turn. Edward Crouse and Marie Stitt are family friends and the owners’ of baba’s — they went above and beyond and created the intimate, European feel that we wanted to keep the party going into the wee hours of the morning.”