Feature: Here Comes the Sun

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Kristin Newman knows how to throw a party. With seven years in the event planning business, she’s engineered intimate get-togethers and all-out shindigs—and everything in between. She’s a whiz at invitations. She’s a pro at table decor. She knows a catering menu like the back of her hand. In fact, there’s only one thing Kristin Newman, party planner extraordinaire, isn’t so accustomed to doing. And that’s throwing herself a party.

“It’s a lot harder to plan your own celebration than it is to plan someone else’s,” she laughs. “You have parameters when you’re working with a client; you say, ‘Okay, this person likes blue, they want seafood, they’d like to be outside,’ and you go with that. But when I think about entertaining for myself, I realize I can do anything I want, and it’s overwhelming! It’s so much easier to make decisions for other people than it is for myself. Besides, who has time to throw themselves a party?”

But summer in the Lowcountry has a funny effect on people. They slow down, they mellow out, they kick back. And as temperatures rise, Kristin finds that her work schedule starts to clear a little. She can breathe again. The days get longer, and she has more time to enjoy them. “My husband says ‘Oh, it’s summer, I can see my wife again!’” she jokes. And that illusive party? It suddenly starts to look a little more feasible.

To welcome the season, Kristin has planned a get-together for a few pals, the kind of occasion where shirtsleeves are rolled up and feet are bare, where no one minds if you show up a little late, and there’s never any worry about using the wrong fork. And as for exchanging presents or making speeches? Why, this isn’t a formal occasion—in fact, it isn’t really an occasion at all. “Create your own holiday, make up something to celebrate,” advises Kristin, whose predominant memories of summers past involve annual fish frys at her grandparents’ lake house in Tennessee. “Commemorating the first day of summer is something we’ve done in my family for a long time. When I think of June, I think of frying fish by the dock.”

Thank goodness then, that husband Chris is an avid flats fisherman with a penchant for cooking and a recipe for fried fish that—according to his wife—is “to die for.” Thank goodness, too, that working in the event planning industry means your closest friends are caterers and floral designers. “If there’s one thing I’ve figured out through planning 30 or 40 parties a year,” says Kristin, “it’s that I can’t do everything myself. I have very talented friends, so it makes sense to enjoy each others’ skills when we get together. Sure, this is what we do for a living—but we do it because we love it.”

To that end, chef Trae Wilson of Granville’s Catering has taken charge of the food, even hand-baking potato chips to make the batter for Chris’s fish recipe. Event and floral designer Heather Barrie-Ahern fashioned a few informal centerpieces out of ferns, poppies, and Queen Anne’s lace. Kristin’s assistant Morgan Young and her boyfriend Ryan Kennedy—who works in the beverage industry—have whipped up pitchers of vodka-laced limeade, its cool tartness a perfect foil for the hot day. And blacksmith Sean Ahern has made sure the party isn’t just about eating and drinking by fashioning a set of iron horseshoes to be used in a spirited game.

“Kristin and I always joke about how we can relate to the idea of the cobblers’ children having no shoes,” laughs Heather. “We love entertaining, but all of our energy goes into our work—it’s nice to finally be able to use our ideas for something of our own. And it really takes the pressure off to only have to think about one element of a party.”

The wide-open lawn overlooking Hobcaw Creek invites laid-back lounging, framed with the shade of palms and oaks. There’s a tire swing to laze on, plenty of space to run around in, and a dock from which to launch the Newmans’ boat onto the river in search of dinner—some freshly caught spottail bass to be fried in a Dutch oven. “One thing I love about living in this region is the diversity of our surroundings,” says Kristin. “You don’t have to travel very far to find a quiet spot near the water and be able to feel like you’re really getting away from it all.”

With the just-caught fish the star of the show, the rest of the menu consists of low-maintenance dishes that can be made in advance and brought out when the fish is done. Along with a coleslaw recipe from Kristin’s aunt and a classic cucumber, onion, and tomato salad—“there’s no reinvention of the wheel on this, but I can’t imagine a fish fry without it”—other accompaniments include Trae’s jalapeño-relish hushpuppies and his grandmother’s macaroni and cheese. There are also, of course—this being summer and the South—trays of truffled deviled eggs. For dessert, blackberry cobbler and homemade ice cream take Kristin back to warm Tennessee afternoons spent picking blackberries with her mother and the family dog—“who’d eat half of them and get blackberry juice all over his face.”

And that’s what it’s all about, really, this getting together with friends, this letting go, this slowing down—it’s about remembering summers past, those days when Monday mornings meant nothing, cushioned as they were in the endless stretch of vacation. “For one or another of us, there’s a memory behind every dish on this menu,” says Kristin. “We’re making comfort food, family recipes, things that are evocative of summer. Food can take you back to a certain time in your life so easily, and that’s what I want this whole party to do—to relive the first excitement of summer we always felt as a child.”