A hurricane, college students and pandemic derailed their wedding. 4th time’s the charm
Shannon Kleban and Jon Eggert have a pretty strong case that Mother Nature does not want them to get married.
After all, the couple has had four wedding dates: Their nuptials were originally planned for Aug. 29 in Pennsylvania, then pushed back to Feb. 20, 2021, then, two weeks ago, catapulted forward to Aug. 2 in South Carolina and finally, set for Aug. 1 with just 24 hours notice.
While wedding planning sometimes feels like a yearlong game of whack-a-mole where couples have to manage the wedding party, schedule rentals and deal with extended family members with weird allergies and political disagreements, Kleban and Eggert coped with much more temperamental forces: The coronavirus pandemic, the Beaufort County Court System and — because their luck couldn’t get much better — Tropical Storm Isaias.
Kleban, 30, and Eggert, 36, who both live in Bluffton, originally planned a beautiful ceremony with their families in State College, Pennsylvania, on Aug. 29, 2020. They met at their apartment complex’s pool four years earlier and got engaged on the beach on Hilton Head in December. They were steaming forward with the plans when the pandemic hit.
At the suggestion of their wedding planner, the couple rescheduled the big day for Feb. 20, 2021 at Penn State’s Eisenhower Chapel and the Nittany Lion Inn. It wasn’t going to be a beautiful summer wedding (in fact, it’d be freezing), but it’d be safer.
“We decided we’re going to push it back so we could celebrate safely at that point with our family and friends,” Kleban said.
Penn State had other plans.
In June, the venue called and notified the couple they’d have to cancel the February wedding because the university would be using the space for student housing and classrooms. It was wrench no. 2 in the wedding plans.
“We’d pushed the date back twice at that point. That should have been a sign,” Kleban said. “We decided that since we’re both here, that we’d just do it on Hilton Head.”
Eggert, who grew up in Greenville, swore he’d never make wedding guests endure an outdoor ceremony in August anywhere in South Carolina, but the pandemic forced his hand: The pair decided they would get married in a small courthouse ceremony on Aug. 2. They’d figure out the rest later.
Enter, wrench no. 3. The Beaufort County Courthouse doesn’t allow wedding ceremonies to be performed there.
The couple could obtain a marriage license from the county, but they couldn’t actually have the ceremony there. Their backup plan (the third one, if you’re keeping score at home) was to get married on a dinner cruise on Hilton Head where the captain could perform the ceremony.
Finally, things were set. The couple would get married Sunday, Aug. 2, in a beautiful boat ceremony with just a few close family members. Shannon ditched her formal wedding gown for a casual tea-length lace dress fit for a cruise from Harbour Town.
But, because the universe decided the couple hadn’t had enough, Tropical Storm Isaias appeared on the radar.
“On Friday, everyone started freaking out about the hurricane. We got a call at 3:30 p.m. Friday (from the cruise company). They said ‘we’re doing our hurricane prep, so we won’t be able to do this on Aug. 2,’” Kleban said. “Our options were to move it to Saturday, our fourth wedding date, or reschedule.”
Kleban and Eggert looked at each other and laughed.
They decided to move their wedding up by 24 hours with less than 24 hours’ notice. Although the decision was stressful, Kleban said the angst melted away after the couple made the decision to move the ceremony one last time.
“It really has showed me that you can plan everything exactly how you want it to go, and then life happens and you sort of have to adjust,” she said. “It did help us focus back on what our goal was, which was to get married.”
So, with a hurricane on the horizon (although its effects were minimal), Shannon Kleban and Jon Eggert became husband and wife on a boat on Calibogue Sound on Aug. 1. They were surrounded by a handful of their family members.
Asked how they’ll remember their wedding day, Shannon Eggert said their months of engagement and wedding planning showed them how flexible they can be — and what’s really important.
“Sometimes, weddings become more about the event and less about the joining people for the rest of their lives,” she said. “We were able to focus on that.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2020 at 12:11 PM.
