May 3, 2025
On her very first day at Indiana University, while moving into her dorm, Annie Hope Mazzola met Chad Donohoe, who was moving in next door. They quickly became best friends, and their circle liked to joke that they’d get married one day. By junior year, they were a couple.
On a visit to Santa Barbara, where his family lives, Chad proposed during a sunset walk along the beach. Another surprise was waiting back at the Donohoe home: more than a dozen loved ones from Greenville had made the cross-country trip to celebrate the engagement.
The ceremony took place under a magnolia tree at the Mazzola family home on the Saluda River. Although the property was hard-hit by Hurricane Helene, friends and family pitched in to make repairs in time for the ceremony.
Annie Hope’s mother, Laura Mazzola, featured in TOWN for her “glass graveyard” and her work with Table 301, sourced all glassware and vases directly from the property.
A last-minute time change (and the old Southern tradition of burying a bottle of bourbon 30 days prior to the ceremony to ward off bad weather) allowed the couple to avoid an incoming thunderstorm and still host their ceremony outdoors on the eight-acre property.
After they said their vows in the front yard, a surprise band burst through the front door and led the wedding party and guests to cocktail hour by the river, where they dug up the bourbon and shared it in celebration.
Annie Hope had long dreamed of a family-style Italian dinner at a long table winding through the property, and her vision was achieved with a 360-foot table and catering from Table 301. Dinner was followed by dancing to the band Soulution in the driveway-turned-dance floor, with the first dance to “Heads Carolina, Tails California,” nodding to their two states of origin.
The bride was the third generation to wear her gown, following her grandmother in 1962 and her mother in 1995. It was carefully restored by When We Were Young.
Currently, the couple lives in Manhattan Beach, California, where Annie Hope works in product development for a fashion company and Chad works in commercial real estate.
