Farrell: Bluffton couple wins $38K wedding from USC

Henry Simmons put on a purple shirt and his orange Phillies cap and headed over to the Tiki Hut on Hilton Head Island for a full-moon party two summers ago.

There, he saw Lea Scavo, a pretty University of South Carolina Beaufort graduate whom he had met before through mutual friends but didn’t really know.

She ran right up to him.

“Why are you wearing Clemson colors?” she demanded.

Simmons was confused.

He wasn’t even certain that she was talking to him.

“I thought I was in someone’s way,” he told me recently. “You know, a beautiful woman walks up to you and … I didn’t think (she was flirting) at all.”

So he replied with a genuine question, one that would be music to the ears of any Gamecocks fan.

“What,” he asked Scavo, “is a ‘Clemson’?”

Let’s just say, the man knows better now.

That night was the first page in a fairy-tale still being written for Simmons — who is originally from Philadelphia ... forgive him for his lack of college football knowledge — and for Scavo, the Bluffton woman who stole his heart.

“I am officially going to be a college football fan,” Simmons said. “I am taking a year off from the Eagles. I’m the biggest Gamecocks fan in South Carolina now.”

He might be right.

On March 21, seven months after he proposed to her, Simmons and Scavo were married at USC surrounded by 100 friends and family — and the 60 strangers who planned every detail of their wedding.

The couple were the latest chosen to receive a $38,000 wedding from Prof. Annette Hoover’s hospitality management class on wedding planning.

It is the 22nd wedding hosted by the school.

“Everything is donated,” USC senior Nichole Wegrzniak said. “The wedding is part of our final exam.”

The grades haven’t come back yet, but Wegrzniak is certain this wedding was A-material.

The Simmonses agree.

“It was definitely a dream wedding,” Henry said. “They went above and beyond.”

Days after the reception, Lea said she was still amazed by the experience.

“We got to enjoy (the wedding) just like a guest would. We had surprises around every corner. And,” she said, “it was much nicer than what we could’ve ever afforded.”

Two months before their free wedding — and six months before the one they had been saving for — Simmons and Scavo sat down on their couch, put on “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and took a chance, together writing an essay they could enter into the contest.

As for their choice in entertainment: “I love that show. It’s a Netflix gem,” Simmons said, not at all defensively to me.

As for the essay, written from Scavo’s point of view, here’s an excerpt: “My mom was diagnosed with PNES (psychogenic non-epileptic seizures) and is struggling to get help. Their insurance is not going to cover treatments so it is going to cost them a fortune out of pocket. So obviously, with her health being more important than our wedding, we are not allowing my parents to help ... so they can use the money towards my mom’s treatments. Henry, on the other hand, lost his mom from cancer when he was 18 and is the biggest supporter of my family’s health because he does not want to lose another mom.”

In other words, this wedding from USC would come at the right time for them.

When Lea’s mother became sick in September, the couple had to slash their budget, simplify the details and come up with a savings plan.

None of that mattered, though. They were worried sick about Lea’s mother and scared by her seizures. The wedding was no longer the priority.

They entered the contest, hoping, but not ever thinking, they’d win.

Soon, they were told that the students had voted and that they were finalists. The winner would be unveiled at a small reception in Columbia.

The couple drove north and moments before the announcement, a bird pooped on Henry’s head — a sure sign that good luck was about to come their way.

But it didn’t.

They did not win.

They came in second.

The wedding went to an older couple who were on their second marriages. It would be a different type of wedding for the USC students to plan.

Henry and Lea drove home disappointed, of course, but also the most gracious losers you could meet.

A few weeks later, though, the older bride-to-be called Wegrzniak in tears.

Her fiance had been diagnosed with cancer.

They could not accept the wedding.

Henry and Lea, who had lost the contest by one vote, could have it.

When Lea got the phone call she was in disbelief.

“It didn’t really hit me until we went up to Columbia to meet with the class,” she said. “Wow, this is real.”

It was last-minute, Wegrzniak said, but “Lea was the best. She was so flexible. She wasn’t picky at all.”

Over the next few weeks, the couple and their wedding party were fitted for their attire. Other than that, though, they just had to show up for the big night.

“It was really great,” Lea said. “We were dealing with a lot of stress because of my mom’s illness. It was really great. It was just fantastic.”

When Henry saw Lea walk down the aisle in the outdoor ceremony, Wegrzniak said, he got a little weepy.

“It was so cute,” she said.

The couple locked eyes and were so focused on each other that they forgot their vows.

When the ceremony was over and the two had signed the paperwork, Henry turned around to their guests.

“You know how at the end of ‘The Breakfast Club,’ the guy pumps his fist in the air?” Wegrzniak said. “Henry did that. He pumped his fist in the air.”

This story was originally published April 7, 2016 at 8:14 AM with the headline "Farrell: Bluffton couple wins $38K wedding from USC."