Have your wedding in the beautiful mountains of Northeastern Tennessee!

A more spiritual and beautiful location for a mountain wedding would be hard to come by. Mother Nature, the original florist, greets spring wedding guests at Sugar Hollow Retreat with blooms of dogwood and redbud, mountain laurel and flame azalea. The mountains tower over the retreat in the distance, reminding those gathered of the power of such a committment made before the Creator.

The Watauga Building has proven to be a great location for mountain weddings. The building itself has a large central area for gathering the guests, as well as kitchen and bathroom facilities that make it a wonderful reception venue.

Wedding guests find that the beauty of the natural Tennessee setting coincides with the beauty of the union. Weddings at Sugar Hollow have been described as "personal and romantic," setting off the importance of spending such occasions in touch with nature and loved ones.

Finding a Mountain Wedding

Andi Gelsthorpe Peters was at her wit’s end.

She and her fiancée, Rob, had searched high and low all over the North Carolina/Tennessee area for an outdoor wedding venue.

The couple, in their mid-thirties, had each been to dozens of weddings. They didn’t want to drag family from other states only to spend a few hours with them. They didn’t want everyone to drive back and forth from hotels to a rehearsal dinner to the wedding site back to a reception. They wanted to create a sense of community and spend time with everyone for a weekend.

But they couldn’t find the perfect place. Some venues were close, but too expensive or had strict rules.

“Someone wanted $10,000,” she said. “I thought we weren’t going to be able to do this.”

A friend suggested Sugar Hollow Retreat.

“We had passed the signs for it on 321, but we’d never been up there,” she said.

She and Rob drove up the road to take a peek at the 300-acre getaway in the Cherokee National Forest.

“When we saw it – the beauty of the 360-degree mountain view – we were sold,” she said. “I thought, ‘We want all our family and friends to stay here.’”

And when she heard she could have the entire place for much less than $10,000, her mouth dropped open.

“We were on,” she said. "I asked Jim, the innkeeper, to write us down on the calendar!"

Sure enough, Andi and Rob exchanged their vows at Sugar Hollow Retreat on Aug. 8, 2009.

More than 150 guests attended the wedding, held in a small valley with mountain views. Friends and family stayed at each of the four guesthouses, the Lodge, and conference center, all with multiple bedrooms, bathrooms and fully stocked kitchens. Andi said the guests enjoyed cooking meals together all weekend.