It all began when Sarah and Chance Adair were looking for a place to get married.
“She wanted an outdoor wedding and I did too, and we wanted a fall wedding,” Chance said. “We were riding around the property looking, because there’s some different old houses and barns here.”
The property, just off Hwy. 9 approximately 10 miles north of Bruce, once belonged to Sarah’s uncle Edsel Blount.
“I knew there was a barn around this spot because of when I worked for Edsel,” Chance said. “You couldn’t see it, it was so grown up. We had to fight our way in here. Hack some trees and stuff down. Hauled a lot of leftover wood and hay out still piled up inside.”
“When I first saw it I knew this was the place, but everyone else thought I was crazy,” Sarah said of the old barn that was built around 1960. It had served a variety of purposes through the years from sawmill to potato storage, but Sarah saw something completely different.
“I just knew this was the place,” she said.
After the wedding of their dreams, the place just sat for almost a year when one day they got a call from a couple who remembered their wedding and asked if they could get married there too.
“We had to come back in and clean it all back up again, but we did it and it all started from there,” Sarah said.
Three years later, The Chapel at Cowpen has hosted more than 25 weddings.
“Once word of mouth got out we started getting a lot of requests for bookings,” Chance said.
As they came, they added facilities including a dance floor, full kitchen and restroom, bride’s room with a wall of mirrors, and a groom’s room.
“The groom’s room is a lot smaller, but I explained men don’t need some big room, just a mirror, refrigerator and hook to hang the jacket and tie on,” Chance said with a smile.
The room additions incorporate locally reclaimed wood and materials. Everything has a very rustic look appropriate for an old barn.
Sarah handles the decorating with Chance serving as the workforce. She said she gets a lot of ideas off Pinterest and is always looking for new ideas to incorporate.
“It gives me an outlet. I love to stay busy so it gives me something to always be working on,” Sarah said.
Much of the furniture was acquired from friends and yard sales – a mix-match of stuff that Sarah reupholsters and designs to work with the property.
She turned an old hog trough into a chandelier, old house doors into backdrops and farm equipment into accent pieces throughout.
In addition to hosting the weddings, Sarah also offers her services as decorator. Some want her full services, others choose to do everything for themselves.
“We give the customers the freedom to make it look the way they want it,” Chance said.
That”freedom” produces some very different looking weddings at the same 60-year-old barn.
Some get married down the long path from the barn to the pond with the water as the backdrop. Some choose the stage with the decorative lighting and doors. Others have used a set up inside the barn, while some choose a backdrop of the surrounding pastures and their rolling hills.
“We see a little bit of everything,” Chance said.
It’s a year-round second job for Chance who tends to the property and coordinates with the local cattle owners to make sure they’re all in the right pasture at wedding time.
For Sarah, it’s a chance to get away from her nursing job and on to the “happier side of life.”
“It’s an opportunity to help people and decorate. I love both of those,” she said.
“We usually close down after December for the coldest months, but otherwise I’m constantly working on it to figure out how I can make it better,” Sarah said. “It’s come a long way from where we started.”
They’ve hosted families from Water Valley, Blue Mountain, Columbus, Oxford, Pontotoc and different parts of Tennessee.
“We just started advertising last year and it’s really taken off,” Sarah said. “ This year we’ve had more local people. We’ve had three locals back-to-back this fall.”
In addition to weddings, the property has also hosted birthday parties, gender reveals, holiday parties and private benefits.
“We’ve done a little bit of everything,” Sarah said.
But the weddings are still the biggest draw for the “chapel.”
“I never dreamed of being in the wedding business, just one of those things that came about,” Chance said. “We’ve put a lot of hard work into the place. It does make me happy to see so many people enjoying it. A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into it just to get it ready for our wedding.”
“I’ve learned a lot from the experience and am still learning and growing,” Sarah said. “That’s part of the fun.”