BOONE, N.C. – 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.
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.