About Us

Cooper and Lauren married in 2013, and they soon began to envision constructing their dream home. Their plans had a few twists and turns along the way from changing locations to starting over in the design process. They wanted an old, but new, home design that drew influences from Lauren’s upbringing on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The idea of a venue was not a consideration until Lauren brought a “wild idea” to Cooper with the thought that he would tell her that she was crazy.  Without hesitation, Cooper embraced Lauren’s idea, and the house building process immediately evolved around this “wild idea” of running and operating a venue out of their dream home. When construction commenced in 2017, Lauren and Cooper already had one son, Hardy Lee Leggett, who's named after his paternal and maternal grandfathers.  Construction completed in 2019, and Jamesleigh Annabelle was born a year later. The Southern Pearl is a family operated business where Lauren and Cooper want to make each of their clients feel like a part of the family, if only for a weekend.