BLACK MOUNTAIN, N.C. — The forecast for Saturday afternoon at Lake Tomahawk Park calls for ninety-eight degrees with a heat index of one hundred and four, and Sloane Hatteras intends to be married in it, outdoors, on the lawn, at two o’clock, in a long-sleeved A-line gown with cathedral-length veil, because that is the vision and the vision has not changed since November.
Hatteras, 31, who began planning the ceremony eighteen months ago from a Pinterest board titled “Soft Mountain Garden — Restrained,” has rebuffed three separate suggestions from her wedding planner, Cami Roe of Roe & Bough Events, that the event start at six rather than two. “Two is when the light is right,” Hatteras reportedly told Roe on Monday. “Six is dinner light. I’m not a dinner-light bride.”
Roe, who has worked weddings in the western Carolinas for fourteen years, said she has stopped pushing back. “When a bride says ‘the vision,’ you stop being the planner and you become the witness,” Roe said, standing in the venue parking lot Wednesday afternoon, where the asphalt was already producing visible shimmer. “My job at this point is to keep an EpiPen on the bridesmaids’ table and get out of the way.”
The ceremony will be held on the south lawn of Lake Tomahawk Park, which has shade for approximately twelve of the ninety-four expected guests. The other eighty-two will be seated in white folding chairs arranged in eight rows facing due west, into the sun. A printed program will be provided. It is also a fan.
Father of the bride Rick Hatteras, 64, will walk his daughter down the aisle in a charcoal three-piece wool suit purchased in 2009 for a different daughter’s wedding. Asked at Thursday’s rehearsal dinner whether he had considered alternatives, Mr. Hatteras said he had been told the suit was “in the vision” and had stopped asking questions in March.
Caterer Brett Pomeroy of Pomeroy Provisions confirmed the cocktail-hour menu — a charcuterie board featuring several soft cheeses, a brie en croûte, and a chocolate-dipped strawberry tower — will proceed as planned, with what he described as “very aggressive ice management.” Pomeroy declined to elaborate. The cake, a four-tier buttercream, will be unveiled outdoors at 4:15 p.m. and is, in his words, “going to do what it’s going to do.”
First Baptist of Black Mountain, located directly across the road from the venue and equipped with central air conditioning and a sanctuary that seats two hundred and forty, has twice offered the use of its building to the wedding party at no charge. Both offers were declined. The pastor, the Reverend Hollis Tew, said he understood. “She has a vision,” Tew said. “I respect that. I’ll leave the doors unlocked anyway.”
A backup plan exists, technically. In the event of what Roe characterized as “an actual medical emergency, not just discomfort,” guests will be relocated to a tent on the north lawn equipped with two industrial fans rented from the Ingles parking-lot kiosk. The tent does not have walls. Roe declined to describe this as cooling.
Asked Thursday evening whether she had any remaining concerns about the forecast, Hatteras said she did not. “Everyone keeps saying ‘heat dome’ like it’s a real thing,” she said. “It’s June. It’s the South. People got married before air conditioning.” She is being married, it should be noted, eleven miles from where her own grandmother eloped in 1958 — indoors, in February.