Wedding season seems to extend later and later every year, but I’ve finally made it to my last one of 2019. And there’s no better way to close the year in nuptials than with a Friday the 13th wedding, complete with a full moon and a probably haunted wedding venue.

This one was a smaller family wedding held at The Southern Mansion in Cape May, New Jersey. It was my first time back in Cape May in years, and the cute main street and Victorian homes were as I remembered. Not the best weekend weather-wise, but I’ll take any weather as long as it’s at the beach.

The Southern Mansion was truly just that — a beautiful old home with a partial wrap-around porch complete with hanging ferns and antique fans, spiral staircases and a pristine stone-walled garden that looked like it came right off the historic streets of Charleston. Built in the 1800s, the venue offered a lot of character, antique-filled rooms and a rich feel.

I love a haunted house, which I assumed this was, but the servers (just trying to do their jobs) didn’t bite when I followed them around asking, so I moved on and vowed to research later — I was correct in assuming; I looked it up. Very haunted.

Lots of dancing ensued, and I was completely transported from the windy, dreary, end-of-summer Cape May weather to the old-school mansion of Southern aristocracy.

— Angelique Platas, associate editor