Room Refunds from Highland Lake Inn— Oct. 3rd Update

Hi everyone,

We have good news about room refunds!

The sales manager at Highland Lake Inn, Cami, has assured us that everyone will be fully refunded for their rooms. They are waiting for power and internet to be restored to the property so they can access their payment processing system to issue refunds. Once issued, refunds may take the usual 5 - 7 business days to appear on your statement assuming that you paid by credit card.

Also, we are relieved to hear from many of you that airlines are giving refunds or travel credits for your flights. If this is not the case for you, please let us know and we’ll connect you with helpful resources from fellow guests.

Please also share with us any other inconveniences you might be experiencing related to the postponement. Seriously, please! While you might imagine that we are in survivalist mode a la Naked and Afraid, our lives and our clothing are not nearly that exciting. We know this postponement creates difficulty for all of you. We love you and it feels good to try to be helpful.

Much love,

Blitney

Wedding Postponed — Sept. 30th Update

To our wonderful family & friends,

We love you and have felt so touched by your messages these last few days. It’s been scary and confusing here, and we feel protected by your presence and care. It helped us to feel like everything would be okay.

And now for the sad and unsurprising news - our wedding needs to be postponed. The venue has no power, internet or cell service, and timelines about restoration are guesses at best. The region is in a state of disaster rescue, and it’s not safe or wise to travel here.

We’re so sorry about the headaches this causes, and that we were not able to make this decision earlier. As you might imagine, we’ve alternating between hope and sadness over the weekend, and feeling in the dark about the venue’s condition until today.

To share a little bit about this experience, we have been in our apartment in downtown Asheville since the storm arrived on Thursday. We lost internet service, then water, and finally cell service a few hours later. Since then, we have had power (unlike most people in the area), but no running water or way to communicate. We are drafting this message in front of a public library with dozens of distressed and colorful locals and tourists, thankful for the free WiFi with the inspiring password of “readmore”.

We are completely fine and safe, and Whitney’s parents, who live in the area, are also safe. There are some adventures involved in our daily routine that our ancestors would be familiar with prior to modern plumbing. But other than that, we are just fine. We have plenty of water stored up and an embarrassing amount of canned food, including a puzzling amount of baby corn and water chestnuts. We also have a table full of party favors and table settings with your names on them.

We are eager as ever to get married and have a wedding with you all! While we are heartbroken about this week, we feel closer to you all than ever, and are relieved to have at least partial clarity.

We haven’t yet been able to have a voice call with the venue to clarify logistics around rebooking a new date and hotel room refunds for folks who can’t attend the new date. We’re working on that as fast we can - we assure you that we are not the bottleneck in those efforts!

As we type thank you to end this note, we are at a loss for how to complete that sentence. It has been moving beyond words to feel your love, especially during this time. We can’t wait to see each of you again, and to give you the hugs that we wish we could give you now.

All our love,

Whitney and Blake