Affordable Alternatives

At the end of September, I had the great pleasure of traveling to Crystal Coast (in the Outer Banks in North Carolina) with a fantastic PR team (Zimmerman Agency) to experience the destination. What made this so different from other trips I've attended is instead of staying in a local hotel, they arranged for us to stay in private luxury homes. Okay, I know - private luxury sounds expensive - but when you've got a group of 20 people staying for a week to attend your destination wedding, what translates is an affordable alternative to a traditional hotel. For a one week stay in one of these 6 bedroom homes is about $4200. When you break it down - 20 people can stay in one of these for about $30 per night. Then you've got the meal situation - to eat out every meal for 20 people, that can get pretty pricey. The home we stayed in had a gourmet kitchen with 2 dishwashers and several places to dine, both indoors and out. Here's the interior of the house we stayed in:

And a picture from the deck:

This was a perfect place to walk out and have a ceremony on the beach - right in front of the house. I actually took a morning walk and discovered someone had done this very thing. Wish I'd had my camera with me then:

The first day we were there it rained cats and dogs, so the Zimmerman girls quickly came up with some alternative activities for the morning. One of which was visiting the Aquarium. We took full advantage of the goofy picture ops: In the picture with me is Jamey Ivey from Zimmerman
Feeling a little crabby...

On to serious activities, they offered us a birds eye view of the area via Cessna. Here we are about to board: (In the picture was myself, Jillian - a writer from NY and the pilot)

The pilot was crazy enough, at one point, to let me take the controls. Poor Jillian was feeling a little woozy and I didn't help things much.

Here's a view from the air. If you recently saw Nights in Rodanthe, the part about the wild horses inhabiting the islands is true. Although Rodanthe is farther north by Cape Hatteras. The horses can be found on Shackleford Banks. There's about 115 of them!

Lucky for everyone, we made it back to earth in one piece. Next up was a quick walk around Beaufort (pronounced Bowfort) for power shopping. Darling town.

Another bright idea from the ladies at Zimmerman, we returned to our luxury home to have a catered dinner and live music. The food was delish and a great night of conversation and indulging in creme brule was had by all.

The next day started with a decadent spa treatment at a wonderful place called OC Spa (they offer bridal party packages, so definitely check them out). Then we ate lunch at a chic little restaurant called Chef's 105. Recommend the lobster salad sandwich with sweet potato fries. Yum. With full bellies we staggered over to Fort Macon:

Then we took a tour of the Historic Beaufort sites. There are several places around this area to do outdoor destination weddings. They have a huge lawn with a magnolia tree which would be a delightful place to say I do! Here's one of the oldest homes in the area:

Next up was an old apothecary.

When ships would pull up to the docks, they would shine a light behind this to indicate if the area had been infected with yellow fever or scarlet fever.

Here are old prescriptions:



Next we boarded a 1960's doubledecker bus to take a historic home tour of the area.

Here's the group (front to back, left to right) Jillian, Summer, Me, Libby, Doc, Kelly and Jamey:

All the homes we saw were beautiful, some dated back to the late 1700's. Imagine all the hurricanes that have hit this area in that time. They just don't make them like they used to.


Later that night we crashed a party, went to a restaurant on Front St. called Sharpies with great signature drinks and capped it off with a lantern lit tour of the cemetery. That was spooky. The visit was a fun one. I got to experience an amazing destination and best of all met some really great people. The Crystal Coast is affordable yet luxurious, steeped in history and charm and allows some fun and interesting things for family and friends to do. A great place for a destination wedding. I give it a definite thumbs up!

If you pick up Nicolas Sparks latest novel called The Choice, it's set in historic Beaufort - and he gives an accurate idea of what the area is like.