BonnyMeade, Your Wedding & Event Place

In 1993, we bought BonnyMeade. At that time, the historic mansion was still standing like a sentinel on the hill. In 1998, some kids playing around torched the mansion and it burned from 1:00 a.m. till 8:00 a.m. It was like we had lost part of the family. Benton "Rip" left the brick walls standing for 2 or 3 years until they started to deteriorate and become a hazard to anyone walking close to the structure. He eventually had someone knock down the walls but left the brick and foundation around and inside the structure that remained. Year by year, Rip collected the historic brick and cleaned off the old mortar and stacked them till he had accumulated around 15,000. The foundation still remained.

One day while Rip and Diana were looking at the remaining structure (foundation only) they got the idea - wouldn't it make a beautiful pavilion for people to use. The next thing Diana knew, Rip had acquired this old historic log home in Smith County down by the Cumberland River (we believe that is why the logs are so massive - they had plenty of water) and had it moved up on the hill beside the soon to be pavilion location. Over one year later we had the cottage finished and then we started on the pavilion.

This has been a labor of love for Rip and Diana. Saving and returning the log home, that was set to be burned in a day or two, into a cute resident cottage for folks to visit and vacation in. And although the original BonnyMeade Plantation home was gone, the original foundation, with hand carved stones made around 1810, still remains at the same location without one stone being moved as again a Sentinel for the public to see and enjoy.

We used the old historic brick - made only a few hundred feet away from the home (we know this because we found the kiln and the soot field where they had burned them, just below the hill of the original home) to brick the back portion of the historic log cottage and as walkways for the brides to travel going from one life to another with the person they have chosen to live the rest of their lives with.