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What Was The Controversy Around Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds' Wedding?
The Gossip Girl actress and the Deadpool actor exchanged vows at Boone Hall Plantation in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, on September 9 2012 and controversy erupted for glamourizing the site
Today, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds are synonymous with the perfect pair in Hollywood. The chemistry and bond they share are clearly visible. The frequent banter and social media presence made them one of the most celebrated couples in the industry. Both got married in 2012 at Boone Hall, but it was not excluded from controversy.
The couple came across pictures of Boone Hall Plantation & Gardens in South Carolina during the early days of their courtship. Feeling wowed with surreal scenes of moss-draped live oaks and rustic charm, they found themselves dreaming of exchanging vows against such romance. Quite literally, the romanticized plantation backdrop for the tearjerkers of films like The Notebook seemed to be the perfect setting for this romance-soaked ceremony. Yet, the beauty of the place trumped its troubled past—a truth destined to chase them years down the line.
Time now passed, and after being whipped around in wedding planning, they started seeing what so many had mentioned—pointed, really—the jarring indications of a pained past. The physical testaments were brick slave quarters crumbling, fields of cotton standing at attention sharing with them the atrocities visited upon these grounds. The plantation, the location where inhuman abuses were meted on enslaved Africans, stood mute at the horrors that visited them as their captors were busy building their fortunes on their backs.
That follows months of pressure from the civil rights group Color of Change, asking that wedding platforms, such as The Knot and Pinterest, stop featuring those plantation venues. Those venues stand as "physical reminders of one of the most horrific human rights abuses the world has ever seen," the group says.
Actor Ryan Reynolds would later admit that he and his wife Blake Lively had deep regrets over having Boone Hall Plantation as their wedding venue. He confessed that they had made a huge mistake to have taken the site without considering its history. He reflected on the situation, admitting, "A giant f*king mistake like that can either cause you to shut down or it can reframe things and move you into action. It doesn't mean you won't f*k up again. But repatterning and challenging life-long social conditioning is a job that doesn't end.".
The advertising for the site belied its dark history as a plantation, touting it instead as an ideal wedding venue. This further meant upholding the glamorization of violent sites against Black bodies. It was a decision that the couple had taken years ago but faced renewed criticism in light of Blake Lively's past comments that had been called racially insensitive.
In an interview with Fast Company last week, Reynolds doubled down on his apology, saying, "It's something we'll always be deeply and unreservedly sorry for. It's impossible to reconcile. What we saw at the time was a wedding venue on Pinterest. What we saw after was a place built upon devastating tragedy. Years ago we got married again at home — but shame works in weird ways.". It's a huge fucking mistake like that that will shut you down, or it reframes things and moves you into action.
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