One weekend, one road trip, one wedding, lots of friends, hundreds of pirates, tons of pictures …
Tybee Island sits just south of the border between Georgia and South Carolina, slightly east of Savannah. It’s a quaint little beach with a slight touch of tourist trap, home to a lot of Georgia’s maritime history.
This weekend it was home to the wedding of Thomas & Barrie, plus the annual Tybee Island Pirate Festival. Thomas didn’t intentioally plan to put his pirate themed wedding on the same weekend as the pirate festival, but the convergence was perfect.
Many of Thomas’ friends are costumers, so they roamed the streets of Tybee in full pirate regalia, posing for pictures and sipping rum from a variety of flasks & bottles hanging from wide leather belts. It was somewhat like Dragon*Con here, folks in character with an eager audience. Kids with plastic swords fence badly as parents watch from the shade of sidewalk awnings, street vendors sell flags and the city embraces an often violent part of its history with ease.
The pirate parade had a good turnout, everyone from shriners to hotels moving floats down to the waterfront. Our hotel’s balconies were prime real estate for photographers and casual observers. The city police seemed relaxed among the cannon blasts and sword-wielding merrymakers, as if this was a typical Saturday afternoon at the beach.
Then came the wedding …. we’ll pick that up in part two.
Leave a Reply