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 mississippi life.
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 legendary crossroads where blues legend robert johnson 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 bar and 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
-
apr 24: friday night
4/24 6:00PM - 8:00PM
@ red panther brewing, clarksdalewe’re kicking off the weekend with delta staples, hot tamales and cold beer! join us in town at clarksdale’s newest brewery. it will be a super casual night with folks coming into town, so drop in and out from 6-8pm and visit however long.
-
saturday morning
4/25 9:00AM - 11:00AM
@ nosef park, clarksdalewe’re hosting the first annual dickens smash to start the day! a pickleball tourney complete with round robin play and a trophy presentation, you can enter with a partner or we’ll make sure you have one. at the end, our top two teams will compete for all the marbles!
-
saturday afternoon
4/25 4:00PM
@ the shack up inn courtyarda crawfish boil is more than a meal, it’s a celebration, and with so many of our friends from out of state, it felt fitting to pile high spicy crawfish across a long line of newspaper-covered tables and show folks what a spring saturday in mississippi is really like.
-
saturday night
4/25 8:00PM
@ the juke joint chapelthe shack up inn’s juke joint chapel is a music venue decorated in a roadside-americana motif, so it was a no-brainer that my coworker joe binns’ cover band, tom cougar mellen petty, would drive the crew over from atlanta to put on a show for us!
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.
-
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 is more of an adults-only kinda place — it’s pretty loud and the shacks are pretty old and definitely not kid-proofed. That said, if you want to keep your little ones close by (especially the little 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! Welcome to the South!
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 during the spring isn’t boring! For the real adventurous, 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. But please, don’t feel obligated. Corny but true, the best gift is having our friends and family join us for the weekend!
a little more about us!
nate and i met the old-fashioned way—by swiping right. 🤷🏻♀️ so thanks to the wonders of al gore’s internet, here we begin. nate was living in oklahoma city when fate (the algorithm) brought us together (matched us on bumble dot com). nate was visiting his parents in madison, ms in august 2023 and, a month of distant but constant conversation later, he just so happened to be back in town again and we planned dinner on sunday.
enter my friend, ly zhang: we met for happy hour at elvie’s on a friday and i told her about my sunday plans with nate. she suggested i text him to grab a drink when he arrived into town later that night, and after a gentle nudge (she forced me to take my phone out right then at the table and text him so i didn’t chicken out), we planned to meet up at the friendly neighborhood irish bar (rip fenian’s).
a “quick drink” turned into a whirlwind nine hours together and we ended the morning on my porch with glasses of laphroaig, skipping the smalltalk and diving headlong into death, religion, and politics. (nate is ever the southern gentleman, and he left after!) we would spend most of that first weekend together and the rest, they say, is history (technically herstory since i’m narrating 😉).
the next seven months, we navigated long distance and our first egg bowl (ole miss won). thanks to nate’s intentionality and my flexible remote work, we managed weeks at a time together. i really loved my residency exploring okc, finding new coffee shops to work, walks around nate’s paseo neighborhood, thunder games, and trying new spots to eat.
in april 2024, we packed both our cars in okc and moved nate into my our belhaven home in jackson (to live in sin for a couple months, sorry to our families). brisket (my dog) was over the moon about it—the amount of daily pets he received tripled overnight. not soon after, a silly, scrappy stray pup we named dill pickle dickens joined the fray, and that fall, nate survived his first election season as the partner of a political consultant (a true test in a presidential year).
sometime in mid november, after half a year working with a craftswoman in north mississippi to rework my grandmother’s jewels into a stunning heirloom engagement ring, nate tied the 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, a nod to our first weekend together. it was perfect. a bright spot in an otherwise bleak november after a plurality of americans voted for an oligarch!
a month later, we booked a stay at the phenom half mile farm in highlands, woke up on friday, december 20th, to grab breakfast and write our vows, and nate drove us through the mountains to the nearest county courthouse to make it official. well, there would be a series of missteps before, but it would all be part of a hilariously appalachian elopement.
in early january, 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.”
small ceremony | french camp, ms
elopement day | highlands, north carolina