Mount Pleasant Magazine Jan/Feb 2019

73 www.ReadMPM.com | www.MtPleasant.pet | www.CharlestonBrides.com Greenville native Patti Rishforth, owner of Heart Paper Scissors, who specializes in the rare art of hand-cut silhouettes, a popular Southern tradition. Rishforth, a third-generation portrait artist, has specialized in the skill for 17 years and flies to weddings around the country and internationally to create one-of-a-kind surcies for happy couples and their guests. She spent years honing her abilities to cut the silhouettes as it was done in France in the 1800s – with no drawing or tracing – just cutting. She is one of about a dozen artists in the United States known to practice this art. “I love to travel and keep this art form alive,” Rishforth smiled. “With technology giving instant gratification, it’s great to see art created from start to finish and take it home, and to be part of something that’s a portrait.” The process involves cutting a person’s profile out of a folded piece of paper, which creates two identical silhouettes. For weddings, Rishforth gives each guest one copy of their profile as a keepsake and places the other copy into an album to create a visual guestbook where guests can also sign or write well-wishes. To Rishforth, the idea that the bride and groom can look back years later and recognize the shape of their friends’ and family ambience or easily transformed into a stunning locale for the finest black-tie events in the Lowcountry. Brides- and grooms-to-be have the freedom to transform it themselves or to hire a planner like Boone Hall’s own Natalie Knox, who has planned and designed dream weddings of all shapes and sizes – from social events of the season to small, intimate gatherings. The main room can be transformed with bars and draperies, and the covered patio becomes a swanky lounge with furniture and chandelier rentals. “Natalie is one of the best in the United States at what she does,” said Marketing Director Rick Benthall. “She has an amazing ability to perfectly capture the vision a couple has for their perfect day. No detail is left unturned, and, at the end of the day, it’s these weddings – the careful planning, the idyllic Southern location, the view, the little ‘wow’ factors throughout that make it memorable for not only the couple getting married but their guests as well.” The Cotton Dock is notably the wedding location for celebrity power couple Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, who tied the knot there in a secret 2012 ceremony and later said, amid a media frenzy over their “I dos,” that they chose it because they wanted their wedding to feel like “home,” according to several media outlets. One of the many meaningful touches Lively and Reynolds included in their wedding was the talent of A wedding guest signing her profile in the guest book. Photo courtesy of Heart Paper Scissors. Photo by Dana Cubbage. bridal