WELCOME TO A REAL
DICKENS
OF A WEEKEND
it means the world you’re celebrating with us in clarksdale. we have a fun weekend planned and can’t wait to see you soon!
nate + emily
FRIDAY
friday night
6:00PM - 8:00PM
@ red panther brewing, clarksdale
kick the weekend off with us at red panther brewing. we’ll have a table full of delta tamales so stop in to grab a couple as a pre meal appetizer and say hi.
this is a casual night — wear what you would to any other brewery on a friday night.
clarksdale will have plenty of good food and live music in town!
SATURDAY
saturday
morning
9:00AM - 12:00PM
@ nosef park, clarksdale
for those who signed up, game time is at 9am! we’ll start off with a round robin and the top teams will move on to the semis with a dickens cup trophy for our champions at the end!
if you’re not a pickleball person, take the morning to choose your own adventure! sleep in, grab breakfast, explore around. the delta is your oyster!
saturday afternoon
2:00PMish - 6:00PMish
@ the shack up inn courtyard
we’ve got an afternoon full of spicy crawfish, cold drinks, and good company! a local crawfish truck will start boiling crawfish and all the accoutrements (potatoes, corn, sausage, mushrooms) around 1pm and we’ll have cornhole and lawn games, and a projector with college baseball on.
come hungry and ready to roll up your sleeves and spend the afternoon exactly how a spring saturday down south should be spent!
we planned a break between the afternoon and night activities for folks to change out of afternoon crawfish clothes into something a little nicer (if you want). nothing formal required — wear whatever you want, casual and comfy is the vibe!
saturday night,
pt. 1
7:00PM
@ the shack up inn juke joint chapel
we’re kicking our night program off with a moth radio hour. in celebration of love and marriage, we invite anyone to come up on stage for a few minutes to share your own story — a triumph, a trainwreck, a lesson or a blesson — all in the name of love.
think of this as less a wedding toast and more like: love brought us all here, so let’s talk about it! yours, ours, anybody’s!
saturday night,
pt. 2
8:00PM - UNTIL
@ the shack up inn juke joint chapel
and finally, the weekend’s main event! the juke joint chapel is a music venue with a roadside-americana motif, so it was a no-brainer that my coworker joe binns would bus his band over from atlanta to headline the weekend.
couldn’t be more excited to have tom cougar mellen petty in all their glory close out the weekend!
SUNDAY
sunday
morning
ANYTIME 8:00AM - 11:00AM
@ the rich house
before you head out of town, come hug us bye and grab a fresh cup of coffee for the road.
we’re staying across the tracks at the rich house and it might have the grandest front porch of them all — we’d be remiss if we didn’t invite you over to enjoy it with us before you leave.
check out is 11am so we’ll be on the porch til then.
here’s a map of the shack up inn property.
Events are optional!
We hope you’ll take the weekend to slow down, take it easy, visit with folks old and new, and support the local Mississippi Delta community!
Grab dinner somewhere fun on Friday night or make the drive on Saturday morning to Cleveland for Leña bagels, brunch 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!
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.
-
Red Panther Brewing
New brewery and taproom in downtown Clarksdale with featuring a great Delta Kölsch.
-
Collective Seed & Supply Co.
Very cute independent garden center and general store in downtown Clarksdale.
-
Hambone Art Gallery
A lively art gallery and the home of the Hopeless Case Bar featuring live blues music and local paintings.
-
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 poboys, 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
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 so really the more informal the better.
Is there a dress code?
No! Wear whatever is comfiest to you!
What will the weather be like?
Late April in the Delta typically features warm, sunny days with highs around 85°F and lows around 55°F at night. 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 the Shack Up Inn?
Here are Google map directions. Once you’re there, follow the signs to the lobby check in. Here’s a map of the Shack Up Inn property.
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!
about us
nate and i met the old-fashioned way in september of 2023—by swiping right on bumble dot com. nate was living in oklahoma city, working as an LPC at a behavioral health hospital, and i was 600 miles away in jackson, but while nate was visiting his parents back home in their jackson suburb of madison, mississippi, it was fate (the algorithm) that brought us together. (the wonders of love in the time of al gore’s internet!) after a month or so of distant but constant conversation, nate traveled back down south one weekend and we planned to grab dinner on sunday.
the day nate drove into town, i was at happy hour on friday with my friend ly zhang and told her about my weekend plans with this internet stranger when she suggested i text nate to meet up later that night. i hemmed and hawwed a bit until she forced me to take my phone out right then so i didn’t chicken out. i told nate i would be out late, “getting drinks with coworkers,” and invited him to join. of course, after nate accepted my invite, i scrambled to ask (bribe) my coworker andrew to meet me at fenian’s, the irish pub in my neighborhood, until nate got there to corroborate my story.
a “quick drink” with nate turned into a whirlwind nine hours together. we ended the night on my porch with a couple highball glasses of my favorite single malt scotch, skipping the small talk to dive headlong into death, religion, and politics. finally we winded our conversation down enough for nate to leave (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 3-0 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 okc to find new coffee shops to work in, walking brisket (my dog) around nate’s paseo neighborhood, thunder games, and trips to the local museums (the okc bombing memorial is remarkable, highly recommend).
every day was better with nate, and so it followed, with irremissible mechanism, falling into a life we loved together. unfussy, but sublime, light-hearted, and full of love.
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 heirloom jewels and use those diamonds to create a new engagement ring. and in the meantime, we moved nate into my belhaven home in jackson (to live in sin for a couple months, sorry to our families). 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 2024, nate tied a ring box to dill’s collar and sent him off to find me. nate got down on one knee and proposed in our living room, and then after, we went to waffle house, a nod to our first weekend together. it was a perfect and happy moment. an all-star moment if you will. (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 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 finding two strangers who would be our witnesses, we finally made it official. it was 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.”