A REAL DICKENS
OF A WEEKEND
the big fancy formal wedding never really felt like us, so we ran off to elope in the foothills of appalachia back in december. and ever since, we’ve been itching to throw a proper celebration, full of family, friends, good food, live music, and a little slice of our life together.
we hope to see y’all there!
emily + nate
april 24-26, 2026
the shack up inn
clarksdale, mississippi
we can’t wait for you to experience the shack up inn, a stop on the mississippi blues trail and an immersive delta experience just three miles from the crossroads where blues legend robert johnson supposedly sold his soul to the devil in exchange for a supernatural guitar talent.
a collection of restored sharecropper shacks surround an original cotton gin, now the shack up inn’s lobby. legend has it, a one-room shack on the property was home to a man who raised seven sons, and by the time they came back to move him out, he had a whiskey still in the attic and no intention of leaving.
THE WEEKEND ITINERARY
6:00PM - 8:00PM
@ red panther brewing, clarksdale
we’re kicking off the weekend with a couple of our favorite delta staples—hot tamales and cold beer! we’ll be at clarksdale’s newest brewery for the night welcoming folks.
this is a casual night with people in and out, so drop by between 6-8pm and visit however long!
clarksdale will be buzzing with live music and places to eat so wander around town and check things out on your way over!
friday night
saturday morning
9:00AM - 11:00AM
@ nosef park, clarksdale
we’re hosting the first annual dickens smash to start the day! join us for a pickleball party* with round robin play.
you can enter with a partner or we’ll make sure you have one. at the end, our top two teams will face off in a championship match for the ages! and maybe a trophy who’s to say!
*important note: this is NOT a required event!!
2:00PM
@ the shack up inn courtyard
a crawfish boil isn’t just a meal—it’s a celebration! and so a heap of spicy crawfish and accoutrements strewn across newspaper-covered tables feels just right for a spring saturday down south.
thanks to my coworker, andrew, for volunteering to boil the crawfish! he offered not knowing i would seriously take him up on it but he’s from new orleans and was in a frat—no better credentials!
saturday afternoon
7:00PM
@ the shack up inn juke joint chapel
we’re opening the stage up, moth radio hour style!
we welcome anyone to come up and share for a minute or two your own story — any of love’s triumphs, tragedies, lessons, and blessins to help us celebrate our love and marriage!
like one of my fave delta artists, church goin’ mule, says: “stories and love is just about all there is in a good world—stories making life starry and magic, love gilding things how it does.”
loved when my camp friends, bry and jeff, did this and so stealing the idea!
saturday night,
pt. 1
8:00PM - UNTIL
@ the shack up inn juke joint chapel
and finally, the weekend’s main event is here! the juke joint chapel is a music venue decorated in a roadside-americana motif, so it was a no-brainer that my colleague joe binns would bus his band over from atlanta to headline the weekend!
couldn’t be more excited to have joe and his cover band close out the weekend. having played with and opened for the likes of the allman brothers, we’re ready to finally experience tom cougar mellen petty in all their glory!
saturday night,
pt. 2
Events are optional!
We hope you’ll take the weekend to slow down, take it easy, and support the local community!
We’re totally okay if you forego pickleball to grab Leña bagels in Cleveland for breakfast, lunch in Clarksdale, or explore more of the Delta. We’ve designed a casual weekend around what we love and encourage you to choose your own adventure for parts of it!
Mississippi is the center of the universe. Welcome to it!
RSVP
THINGS TO DO
-
Cat Head Delta Blues & Folk Art
The de facto welcome center for visitors to Clarksdale, has been Mississippi's blues store in Clarksdale since 2002.
-
Delta Blues Museum
Showcases the history and significance of the Blues in the Delta. It features a wax figure of Blues great Muddy Waters!
-
Ground Zero Blues Club
Local blues bands, Southern food & booze in a down-home club, co-owned by actor Morgan Freeman.
-
Red's
A classic juke joint serving cold beer and live music, one of the last joints in the world to see blues music in its birthplace.
-
Bad Apple Blues Club
From TripAdvisor: A classic Mississippi juke joint: old living room furniture, collapsing ceiling tiles, the smell of cat litter.
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Quapaw Canoe Company
Guides single- or multi-night canoe trips on the Mississippi River, which flows just 10 miles west of downtown.
PLACES TO EAT
-
Leña Pizza + Bagels
40 min away in Cleveland but have to add: NYT 22 best pizzerias, Leña serves pizza nightly and breakfast Saturday.
-
Ground Zero Blues Club
Local blues bands, Southern food & booze in a down-home club, co-owned by Morgan Freeman.
-
Hooker Grocer & Eatery
Eat place with po’ boys, shrimp, and Delta takes on fare like the French dip, which is loaded with brisket smoked onsite.
-
Levon's
Owned by an Aussie with Nola-inspired creole classics open on Wednesday - Saturdays after 5.
-
Meraki Roasting Company
Really great small-batch coffee, roasted and served by kids in Clarksdale, with a big community impact.
-
Yazoo Pass
Inside the old Woolworth's Building in Downtown Clarksdale, Yazoo Pass offers breakfast and lunch six days a week.
-
Abe's BBQ
Family owned since 1924, famous for their homemade bbq sauce, chili cheeseburgers, and hot tamales.
-
Bluesberry Cafe
A fun, relaxed atmosphere with breakfast and live blues on Saturday & Sunday mornings.
-
Grandma's House of Pancakes
Closed Sundays, great breakfast. Last I went, it was CASH ONLY so take that into consideration.
FAQs
Are my kids welcome?
We love you and we equally love your offspring, but the Shack Up Inn, like they say on their website, “it’s just a place for grown folks” — it’s pretty loud and the shacks are pretty old, rusty, and definitely not kid-proofed, and we encourage you to hang out past their bedtimes. That said, if you want to keep your little ones close by (especially the babies!) or if you can’t find childcare, bring them along! We’ll party with your kids; we’d rather have you there than not!
Will there be a ceremony?
No! We intentionally had a small ceremony just after we eloped so we wouldn’t have to wear uncomfy bridal attire and stand awkwardly in front of people for an extended amount of time. No thanks! Actually, the more informal the better.
Do I need to stay the entire weekend?
While we do hope you can join us all weekend, we totally understand if you can’t. Let us know what your plans are so we can coordinate accordingly! You can use the RSVP above or just text either of us.
Is there a dress code?
Absolutely not.
What will the weather be like?
Truly could not tell you, Mississippi weather is so unpredictable. Late April in the Delta typically features warm, sunny days with highs around 85°F and lows around 55°F. There could be rain, or it could be the clearest blue sky you’ve ever seen. Could be both in the same day!
How do we get to Clarksdale?
The closest airports are Jackson (2.5 hours away) or Memphis (1.5 hours away). From there, you’ll need to grab a rental car to the Delta, but the drive in the spring isn’t boring! For the real adventurous, Nashville is a little over 4 hours from Clarksdale and New Orleans is about 5 hours away!
Do you have a registry?
A few folks have asked about gifts, so here’s a link to our registry. This is not exhaustive, just a few things we have our eye on. We also love art! Or you can just draw us a fun picture instead, we would love that! But seriously, the best gift would be having you join us for the weekend!
nate and i met the old-fashioned way—by swiping right on bumble dot com. 🤷🏻♀️ nate was living in oklahoma city and i was 600 miles away in jackson, but while seemingly by happenstance (nate was visiting his parents in madison), it was really fate (the algorithm) that brought us together. the wonders of al gore’s internet amiright! after a month of distant but constant conversation, nate traveled back to mississippi and we planned to grab dinner on sunday.
enter my friend, ly zhang: she and i met for happy hour on friday after work and i told her about my sunday plans with this internet stranger i was really into. ly suggested i text nate to meet up later when he got to town, and after a second gentle nudge (she forced me to take my phone out right then so i didn’t chicken out), nate and i arranged to meet up at fenian’s, the irish pub in my neighborhood.
a “quick drink” turned into a whirlwind nine hours together. we ended the night on my porch with glasses of laphroaig, skipping the small talk to dive headlong into death, religion, and politics. finally we winded our conversation down enough for nate to drive back to where he was staying (ever the southern gentleman). we would spend most of that first weekend together, and the rest, they say, is history (technically herstory since i’m narrating 😉).
for the next seven months, we navigated long distance, family holidays, and our first egg bowl together (ole miss is 2-0 since then). thanks to nate’s intentionality and my flexible remote work, we managed weeks at a time together. i really loved my residency exploring oklahoma city, finding new coffee shops, walks around his paseo neighborhood after work, thunder games, and yes of course, a visit to the okc bombing memorial.
every day was better with nate, and so it followed, with irremissible mechanism, falling into a life we loved together. unfussy, but magical, light-hearted, and full of love.
about us
by the start of 2024, we knew we wanted to build a life together, and so we started in february working with a north mississippi craftswoman to melt down my grandmother’s rings and use those heirloom diamonds in an engagement ring. but in the meantime, we packed both our cars that spring in okc and moved nate into my belhaven home in jackson (to live in sin for a couple months, sorry to our families 😬). my german shepherd, brisket, was over the moon about it—his amount of daily pets tripled overnight, thanks to the new roommate.
soon after, a silly, scrappy stray pup we named dill pickle dickens joined the fray, and that fall, nate passed the true test: surviving his first election season as the partner of a political consultant (during a presidential year taboot).
on the third saturday in november, nate tied a ring box to dill’s collar and sent him off to find me (a responsibility not entrusted to brisket). nate got down on one knee and proposed in our living room, and then after, we went to waffle house and out to sit at the reservoir, a nod to our first weekend together. it was a perfect and happy moment. (in an otherwise bleak november!)
we booked a stay at half mile farm in highlands, north carolina a month later and woke up on friday, december 20th, to grab breakfast, write our vows, and then head off to the nearest county courthouse in our hiking boots. after a series of missteps, hunting down an atm for $50 cash to pay the magistrate and tracking down two strangers who would be our witnesses, we finally made it official, a very appalachian elopement.
in early january 2025, we gathered our immediate families in my hometown of french camp to bless our marriage.
we agree not much has changed since we got married. like tom waits says, “if there's love in a house, it's a palace for sure.”
