For Lauren Matthews-Ide there was only one destination where she would host her bachelorette party: Dollywood.
A Dolly Parton fan since childhood, Matthews-Ide had been writing stories about the star since she was 7, inspired by the tabloids she saw at grocery checkout lines. So in October 2012, she and 15 guests headed to the theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn., for a Dolly-themed weekend.
The memories from the event have become more poignant following Parton’s death last month. Sometimes sporting blonde wigs, the group visited the dinner theater Dolly Parton’s Stampede, the singer’s statue in nearby Sevierville and feasted on a homemade “boob” cake and “Steel Magnolias”-themed cupcakes.
But Matthews-Ide’s favorite moments were back at the cabin they rented, which they called “the Chicken Ranch” after “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” which starred Parton.
“We would watch a different Dolly movie every night and then just sit around and talk and put on music and dance and laugh,” said Matthews-Ide, 43, an editorial commerce director who lives in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
“For me, doing life ‘the Dolly way’ is just having no judgment and being accepting of everyone and living life with optimism,” she added.
Many others feel the same way and have paid tribute to the superstar with Dolly-inspired wedding celebrations and events.
Shabbat Dinner Impersonator
Mallory Blair feels touched by Parton’s loving acceptance. “I’m a nice Jewish girl from the Upper East Side, and I think that’s actually the beauty of it,” Blair said. During her wedding weekend, in June 2023, she hosted a 175-person Shabbat dinner at Fess Parker Winery in Santa Ynez, Calif., featuring a Parton impersonator.
After the news broke of Parton’s death, Blair, 37, of Los Angeles, said she received several text messages from wedding guests recalling how incredible it was that “Parton” made a cameo appearance.
As a founder of a public relations firm, Blair particularly appreciates Parton’s mix of business savvy, femininity, whimsy and ambition, all with “a wink and a rhinestone” in tow. “It’s the paradox that you can take the work seriously, but not yourself,” she said.
Blair also had her bachelorette party at Dollywood in April 2023.
Parton Dress-Up
Marissa MacLeod’s February 2025 Nashville bachelorette party culminated in a Parton-inspired dress-up night at the White Limozeen, a Parton-inspired rooftop bar and restaurant located atop the Graduate by Hilton Nashville in Midtown Nashville. “Dolly is just such the perfect representation of girlhood,” said MacLeod, 39, a marketing director for wedding venues in St. Augustine, Fla. “Being true to yourself and loving other people” is the ideal mascot for a bachelorette, she said.
MacLeod, who shares a Jan. 19 birthday and an accompanying sense of “kinship” with Parton, also admired her famously private 58-year marriage to Carl Dean. “Your marriage doesn’t have to be loud to be wonderful,” she said.
Drag Queen Welcome Party
For Margaret Knowles, an artist-studio director from Brooklyn, Parton’s flashier side was on full display for her July 2024 wedding welcome party for around 150 guests at 74 Wythe in Brooklyn. In what Knowles, 38, calls “one of the greatest moments of my life,” a Parton drag queen from the Manhattan-based Screaming Queens Entertainment performed a medley of Parton’s hits. “She would be obsessed with these lesbians having this drag queen at their wedding, everyone screaming ‘9 to 5,’” Knowles said of Parton.
“Dolly has actually done so much for the queer community,” she added. The wedding also featured Parton signage and cocktail napkins with a Warhol-esque image of Parton’s face.
Like many superfans, Knowles is struggling to accept Parton’s death. “I didn’t really realize Dolly could die,” she said.
‘By Dolly, We Eloped!’
Just weeks before Parton’s death, Courtney Towles, 41, went as far as to invite the singer to her June 2026 elopement in Nashville’s Centennial Park.
Towles and her husband, Ian Abercrombie, initially planned to elope in Las Vegas, but switched gears. “I wasn’t actually an Elvis fan,” said Towles, an executive aide for the Supreme Court of Maryland. After some research, she found Natasha Neely, a Nashville-based Parton impersonator and wedding officiant. Towles said she booked Neely for $300 and ordered a sign on Etsy that said, “By Dolly, We Eloped!”
The couple, who live in Lusby, Md., then turned their elopement into a Parton-inspired road trip, visiting her exhibits at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, her Sevierville statue, and Dollywood and Dollywood’s Splash Country water park in Pigeon Forge.
Neely, who has performed as Parton for about 14 years, began officiating last year after receiving multiple requests. She has since officiated or participated in 10 weddings and vow renewals, incorporating various Dolly-isms and songs like “Islands in the Stream” or “I Will Always Love You” into the celebrations.
A Parton Wedding Avatar
Dolly Parton’s likeness was everywhere at Scott Barnhardt and JP Karliak’s July 2022 wedding at Camarillo Ranch in Camarillo, Calif., frequently alongside Skeletor, a “Masters of the Universe” character and a nod to Karliak’s career as a voice actor. Custom illustrations of the unlikely pair appeared on the guest book and party favors, while plush dolls held the rings during a Celtic ring-warming ceremony before 200 guests. The couple’s first dance was to Parton’s cover of Brandi Carlile’s “The Story,” and guests sipped a color-changing “Dolly’s Mule of Many Colors” cocktail while listening to a “Dolly and Friends” playlist during dinner.
“Parton lived every day as the biggest day of her life, and I think there’s something to that,” said Barnhardt, 45, an educational consultant from Long Beach, Calif., adding that queer weddings can often be divisive. “Dolly is the unifier,” he said.
Married at Bonnaroo
Tanner Lunn, 35, an LED technician and D.J., and Lindsay Starr, 32, who is training to become a real estate agent, fell into their Parton-themed wedding.
While attending the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tenn., in June 2022, they stumbled upon the “House of MatROOmony,” where Vancie Vega, a Parton impersonator from Los Angeles, was officiating weddings. On a whim, they invited 30 friends to the makeshift chapel and got married there two days later.
“It just all felt very kismet and connected,” said Lunn, whose father, Gary Lunn, worked as a studio bassist for Parton starting in 1992 and joined her touring band in 2013. “Like, ‘Oh my God, this is the eloping wedding that we were supposed to have,’” he added.
Starr, whose mother died in 2021, became emotional while giving the county clerk her mother’s name for their wedding license. As Vega retouched her makeup, “she spoke to me in such a kind and comforting way,” fitting for a Parton impersonator, Starr said.
‘I Will Always Love You’ Dance
Sarah Nugent had a Parton-themed bachelorette party in July 2023 in San Diego. Three months later, she and her father, Mike Reed, danced to Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” at her 165-person wedding at Spruce Mountain Ranch in Larkspur, Colo. She said the song choice now resonates more profoundly following his death earlier this year.
Nugent, 31, a solutions consultant for a software company in Denver, has always interpreted the song as an ode to loving someone you have to “let go in order to move on to the next chapter.” At her wedding, she said, it meant “moving from the family that raised me” to start her own.
On Sept. 8, Nugent’s five-month-old daughter received her first book, a version of Watty Piper’s “The Little Engine That Could,” from Parton’s Imagination Library.
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