By Dan Murphy
One of Westchester’s most attractive couples, Hollywood stars Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, have come under criticism for the location of their 2012 wedding. The couple exchanged vows at the Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens in South Carolina.
The 330 year old Plantation, located in Mt. Pleasant, SC, a few miles from Charleston, is aware of the controversy surrounding Lively & Reynolds wedding and the owners are concerned. “We treasure all our relationships with couples that have chosen to get married at Boone Hall, and, when needed, respond to them in private, honest, and personal discussions to address any concerns they may have. The discussions are heartfelt as we want to listen and put love and respect at the center of any issues that arise. We will always work to be a part of the solution for our couples, not a part of the problem,” wrote the plantations owners. .
The Southern estate, founded by Englishman John Boone in 1681, has stood for 339 years -and in addition to hosting high priced private affairs, also operates educational programs about its role in the history of slavery. Included on the grounds are cabins and other historical item.
Rumblings about the planation wedding of Lively and Reynolds began in 2018 after Reynolds made positive comments about the Movie Black Panther, resulting in online attacks calling him a hypocrite for his plantation wedding.
And in 2019, an effort was underway to have their wedding photos removed from Pinterest. Comments like, “for me having a wedding at a plantation is like having a wedding at a concentration camp just bad taste, i dont even understand the desire to have it there.”
After the outcry, Online wedding services including The Knot removed the plantation from their photos and possible wedding locations.
Color of Change, a civil rights group, wrote –“The wedding industry makes hundreds of millions of dollars in profit by promoting plantations as romantic places to marry, and in doing so, routinely denies the violent conditions Black people faced under chattel slavery,” wrote Arisha Hatch, Color of Change Vice President. “Plantations are physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen, which, over the course of the Atlantic Slave Trade, enslaved 10.7 million Black people in the Americas.”
Last month, the couple posted the following statement – We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systematic racism is We’ve been teaching our kids differently than the way our parents taught us. “We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it…especially our own complicity.” The couple has three children together.
Reynolds added in an interview, “It’s something we’ll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for,” Reynolds told Fast Company about the wedding. “It’s impossible to reconcile. “Years ago we got married again at home—but shame works in weird ways,”
The couple has donated $1.2 million to both the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
They live in Pound Ridge, with their children, on a 1.8 acre garden estate. Prior to that, they lived in Reynolds home in Bedford, so the Westchester lifestyle suits them. Like all Hollywood stars, they prefer their privacy, which they get on the quiet back roads of Pound Ridge and Bedford. And when they travel into town for groceries or Ice Cream for the kids, they remain undercover and most of the towns residents respects their privacy.
One favorite spot is The Inn at Pound Ridge, where chef Jean-Georges’ has created an restaurant -attraction that includes the Reynolds-Lively family and their neighbor, Ralph Lauren,
Lively ran a website called Preserve, which sold handmade and historic items, some of which came from Bedford, until 2014.
