Lindsay Barrows of Custom Love Gifts and Events began her company in 2011 selling customized mini mason jars filled with jams and butters on Etsy, marketed to the rustic wedding clientele.

-- Submitted Photo Courtesy Of Jayson Mullen Photography

If you’ve got it, flaunt it – that’s the mindset of many couples that want to show off the beauty of Tennessee to their family and friends with a rustic, indoor or outdoor wedding.

And they are certainly not alone.

According to The Knot 2014 Real Weddings Study, farms and historic buildings have steadily grown in popularity as a venue nationwide since 2009. Historic buildings and homes made up 14 percent of overall locations last year compared with 12 percent in 2009, and farms made up six percent in 2014, up from three percent in 2009.

Locally those numbers are probably higher judging from the pages and pages of Google listings for “farm wedding venues Tennessee.”

“Rustic owns the world, and my personal thought on that is we will never see the end of mason jars,” says Jacqui Wadsworth, owner of the Gilded Gown in Sevierville.

“We’ve got a chandelier, we’ve got fancy goblets, but then we’re also going to have Ball jars. Just learn to love and embrace it, because it’s never going away.”

One person banking on the longevity of rustic weddings is Lindsay Barrows of Custom Love Gifts and Events in Knoxville. Now a full-on wedding planning and favor business, Barrows started her company in 2011 selling customized mini mason jars filled with jams and butters on Etsy, marketed to the rustic wedding clientele.

Choosing the Leiper’s Fork Inn in Williamson County for her wedding allowed Mackenzie Luttrell to have the rustic wedding of her dreams, including gathering her 45 guests around a big farm table.

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“It was actually an accident,” Barrows explains. “We were doing wedding favors for our own wedding, and I ordered little tiny jars that were smaller than I wanted.

“We were doing apple butter and jam so I went ahead and made them and put them on Etsy, so I could sell what I had purchased incorrectly, get my money back and get what I wanted.”

Surprisingly, business boomed. Within six months Barrows had to quit her job to do favors full time, and last week she filled her 1,800th order.

“I think Tennessee will always have a special place in its heart for the rustic style because it is Tennessee,” Barrows adds.

“We are close to Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg and more of the cabin-style here. And I’m really thankful for that because most of our favors are in mason jars so that works well for our business. It’s not quite as popular as it was maybe in 2012, but I don’t see it as a trend that’s going to go away in Tennessee at all.”

Simple doesn’t mean cheap

While a farm wedding is probably going to be less expensive than a downtown affair – the average price of a wedding in Manhattan is more than $76,000 – people can sometimes assume ‘simple’ is a euphemism for ‘cheap,’ and that can be a costly mistake to make.

For example, Wadsworth says many brides who opt for a rustic wedding want a simple, lace gown to match, but the material that was historically only used on cuffs and collars because of its high expense is still some of the priciest to work with.

“One of the reasons royal families use lace all over is to prove that they are the top echelon of society,” Wadsworth explains.

“When you want an all-over lace dress you’re saying ‘I am a wealthy person.’ Even if you get a simple lace dress, prepare for the price tag.”

Plus, you don’t have to have a farm to have a rustic Tennessee wedding. Now, you can recreate a barn-type feeling in a venue that also offers the most amazing downtown view. Or, throw an elegant, over-the-top affair in an out-of-town barn.

“When you have an empty venue, we can create anything,” says Sarah Ann Miller, director of

Weddings for Randi Lesnick at Randi Events in Nashville.

“We could make the most elegant theme in a rustic environment, and not even know it’s a rustic environment. And when you say downtown, and you say rustic, sometimes that’s really synonymous with each other, because downtown Nashville is a rustic environment.”

Like a vacation

Mackenzie Luttrell knew right away she wanted a rustic wedding and didn’t even consider one of downtown Nashville’s many iconic locations. After all, as the marketing and communications manager for the Nashville Public Library Foundation she’s downtown every day.

Instead, she opted for the luxurious Leiper’s Fork Inn in Williamson County where she, her groom, and their 45 guests could have a real vacation out in the historic village.

But that certainly didn’t mean skimping on style.

Built from two 100-year-old homes, the inn is owned by Shelter and Roost properties and located on close to three acres. It is furnished primarily with antiques including a restored claw-foot tub. There is a gourmet kitchen with granite countertops and top-of-the-line stainless steel appliances, three fireplaces, including one in a master bedroom, and large porches.

“I wanted to just have almost like a destination or vacation for us,” she explains. A photographer friend tipped her off about the location after shooting another wedding there, and Luttrell was hooked the moment she saw it.

“We just fell in love with it because even though it’s just 30 or 45 minutes outside Nashville, it’s just a totally new landscape,” Luttrell points out.

“I’d say 90 percent of our guests were from out of town, and so they all rented these really cool restored farm homes around the area, and we all stayed out there.”

The outdoorsy location leant itself to the intimacy of her wedding too, Luttrell says, especially when they were all gathered around a big farm table sharing the celebratory meal family style.

“There were bottles of wine on the table and big platters of food, and it allowed us to have this incredible meal,” she adds.