All in the details: a Clarksdale bride applies a designer's eye to transform a familiar setting.

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Sure as she'd be wearing white, Whitney Pettey knew certain things were simply a given.

Both families' longstanding ties--Clarksdale, his in Greenville--meant her wedding to Grant Joiner was bound to be a big Delta celebration. The ceremony, naturally, would be in her home church with a country-club reception to follow.

But the 25-year-old interior designer had her own ideas when it came to the details of her big day--from the delicate peach-and-green floral scheme to the billowy drapes that lent elegance to an empty hall.

"I really wanted to create a different environment inside the Clarksdale Country Club, so that it wouldn't just feel like the same wedding with the same people," she says.

Her defining departure: Swathing the club's grill room in fabric from floor to ceiling, and furnishing it with low chairs and sofas. The bride turned to Sally Shy Event Design and rental service of Memphis, Tennessee, to create the dramatic effect.

By also rethinking the traditional buffet arrangement and serving most of the food in the club's main ballroom Pettey opened the grill room as a cozy tent-like space that provided a perfect foil for the energy around the stage and dance floor.

"Usually all the food is in that small room and there is a traffic jam of people," says Pettey, who worked with family friend and caterer Chris Card to plan the reception layout.

Together, they designed a serpentine buffet with two lines in the main ballroom, and spread out the food service so that the 500 wedding guests could move comfortably through each room and an outside seating area.

"Being a space planner is such a big part of what I do," Pettey says. "It made me realize so many interior designers could go into event planning, too."

Since her wedding on April 21, 2007, Pettey has been working as a commercial interiors designer for the firm MBI in Memphis. Grant is a sports-marketing agent for Memphis-based BottleRocket Sports & Entertainment Marketing.

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The couple had known each other during their undergraduate years at the University of Mississippi, but began dating only a few months before Pettey left for a yearlong program at Parsons design school in New York. Grant, meanwhile, had returned to Memphis after completing a graduate program in Australia.

Long-distance dating made for frequent flights between Memphis and New York as the couple grew closer. But when it came time for Grant to pop the question, he chose a place where they both shared memories.

"Rather than in New York, he wanted to do it in the South where we could always go back and remember," Pettey says.

He proposed in Oxford at William Faulkner's Rowan Oak, on the Friday evening before the Ole Miss-University of Georgia football game in September 2006. With family and friends in town for the game, it made for a weekend of impromptu celebration as everyone began looking forward to the big day for the newly engaged couple.

Their six-month engagement provided time for Whitney and her mother, Georgia Pettey of Memphis, to tackle the challenge of planning a Clarksdale wedding from out-of-town.

Critical to that process was Card, who owns The Ranchero restaurant and catering service in Clarksdale. Her daughter, Morgan, had been a lifelong friend and college roommate of the bride.

While the food for the wedding reception was provided by the country club, Card helped to direct plans for the buffet setup as well as the menu selection.

"It's important where you put the food, because you have got to have enough room for your guests to linger and eat," she says.

"It's also important to chose the right types of food that they can pick up. You don't want them to put their plate down because they might also have something to drink in their hand."

Among highlights of the reception menu was a dramatic shrimp-cocktail display, with shrimp cascading from inside a glowing ice sculpture that served as the grill room's centerpiece.

The main buffet featured a sweet-potato bar, toppings of coconut shavings, brown sugar, pecans, and miniature marshmallows, which made for a uniquely Southern take on the traditional baked-potato bar.

With the reception stretching late into the night, Card had suggested a second round of snacks--miniature cheeseburgers--to be passed around as the party rolled on.

"Weddings are a little different now, because the young people stay so long," she says.

"When we got married 25 years ago, it was cheese straws and cake and then you left. But today, guests stay later and want to see all their friends. We wanted to serve something for the younger people afterward."

In addition to all the carefully planned details prepared by the women, it was the contributions of Whitney's father, Holmes Pettey, proved most memorable.

A financial planner, he'd spent most of the wedding preparations playing the pocketbook-minded role every father-of-the-bride knows well. But as the wedding day drew near, he was eager to celebrate his only daughter's marriage in grand fashion.

And what, after all, could be more grand than resounding brass, the throbbing beat snare drums and "From Dixie With Love" rising to an upbeat crescendo?

The father-of-the-bride had made special arrangements for the Ole Miss Pride of the South marching band to come to Clarksdale for a reception appearance. Shortly before the wedding day, though, he thought better of surprising the bride.

"He told me, 'I do have the band coming. I thought I should run it by you," Whitney laughs. "I said, 'I think it will be awesome.'"

Dressed in their crisp red uniforms and plume-top hats, members of the band marched the couple into the reception hall and kicked off the party to the crowd's delight. The perfectly Southern scene made it onto YouTube, and inspired sportswriter and Clarksdale native Wright Thompson to rhapsodize over football-season longings in a feature story on ESPN.com.

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As an added surprise, the bride's father had invited Clarksdale Mayor Henry Espy to present the newlyweds with a key to the city.

He also surprised the couple by passing out red caps embroidered with their names and wedding date, as well as having printed a red-and-blue banner declaring "Congratulations Grant & Whitney." He'd had group photographs taken with the banner by Ole Miss sports teams and by the bride and groom's sorority and fraternity, and presented them to the couple at the rehearsal dinner.

While the celebration will live on in the memory of friends and family, for the couple, the ceremony itself was the most meaningful part of their day.

The service was performed in Whitney's home church, First United Methodist of Clarksdale; by college minister Les Newsom the Reformed University Fellowship leader at Ole Miss.

"Even though it had been a few years since college, Grant and I both looked up to him," Whitney says. "We had seen him do a few weddings for our friends, and the whole message of the service was really important to us."

Looking back, Whitney says, the best part was simply bringing together in one place all the dear friends she and Grant had kept up with over the years.

Her collection of 13 bridesmaids and six honorary bridesmaids were testament to the friendships she had maintained since college, high school, and even childhood.

Each of those friends is busy following her own course in life, across a host of different cities. But in that one weekend, the bride could enjoy gathering all of them around her.

"With Grant and I starting our relationship after college and with all our friends scattered everywhere, it will never be like that again," Whitney says.

"It was such a blur. You just wish you could push pause and enjoy it even longer."