An Innisfil wedding venue has left more than 80 couples at the altar.
After cancelling weddings booked for the 2024 season throughout the past month, Rustic Silo Barn has filed for bankruptcy.
A Notice of Bankruptcy was sent June 26 via email to the 88 creditors who are owed a total of $331,173.02, after the bankruptcy was filed in a Mississauga court the day before.
“This was the worst-case scenario for the owners of Rustic,” said Joshua Harris, bankruptcy trustee with Harris and Partners. “They are extremely upset and distraught about the situation and doing their very best to amicably help anyone get rebooked at a different venue at a discounted rate.”
It was a sentiment echoed by Rick Young, one of the owners of the property at 1176 2nd Line, where Rustic operated in 2023.
“We feel terrible for the situation this has caused, but be assured that all intentions were genuine,” he said in a text message. “We also are devastated that we could not open sooner.”
After failing to secure the required permits from the Town of Innisfil to operate, couples with 2024 wedding dates began receiving phones calls from Rustic co-owners and site managers, Shannon Gardner and James (Jim) Zarrouk, informing them their weddings could not proceed at the venue as planned and offered them an alternative location.
Harris said more than a dozen couples have taken up Rustic on this offer so far, allowing the couples to transfer their previously paid deposit to the new venue.
“We’ve been speaking to several of these potential brides and grooms and it seems that we’ve resolved a lot of the concerns,” he added. “Hopefully we can continue to help them.”
As the 82 couples who are now creditors were learning of the bankruptcy, Innisfil council was in the process of removing the holding provision on the property that remained in place since the approval of a zoning bylaw amendment in April.
With the holding provision removed, building permits could begin to be taken out and the necessary steps to get an occupancy permit that would allow the facility to legally operate as an event space could finally commence.
“In the interest of public safety, and fairness, all businesses in Innisfil must comply with the necessary bylaws, building and fire code requirements and in this particular case, the venue does not yet meet those requirements.” planning and growth director Andria Leigh wrote in an email to InnisfilToday before the June 26 council meeting.
“We recognize it is a challenging situation for the owners of the business, but it is their responsibility to bring this venue into compliance to continue operating,” she said. “The town continues to work with the business owners to meet these requirements.”
As the town continued to work with Rustic, some couples say the venue went radio silent. In most cases, contact has been broken off between the venue’s operators and the couples.
InnisfilToday connected with 16 different brides and grooms in the lead-up to the bankruptcy filing, which came as a shock to many. Most couples requested not to speak on the record, worried their chance to recoup their losses and receive a full refund might be jeopardized.
But they shared similar experiences to those featured in this story. They got engaged, found their perfect wedding venue and then had what should be one of the greatest days of their lives ruined by factors out of their control.
The bankruptcy filing shows the couples are owed more than $280,000. Some have seen their big day come and go. Others have frantically rescheduled, shelling out thousands of dollars more on new venues. A few have cancelled their weddings outright, either because they are so soured on the entire prospect or because they’re waiting to get back the money they paid to Rustic.
Lauren Thomson’s wedding was the first booked for 2024 at Rustic. She was not about to let those thoughts seep into her mind the night before her wedding, a moment she had dreamt about since she was a little girl.
“We’re having our day, and that’s what matters,” she recalled saying to her now-husband, Robert. “I’m not letting Rustic win and ruin my day.”
Thomson’s wedding at Chestnut Creek in Bradford was the culmination of months of stress and worry, which reached an apex May 1 when Rustic cancelled her booking. The shock for Amanda Windatt was more sudden.
Windatt’s wedding at Rustic was scheduled for June 30. Unfortunately for her, she did not have the awareness Thomson did.
“We just were very blindsided by everything,” she said. “We didn’t even know they had permit issues. We just had no idea.”
She first discovered the venue in spring 2023 and clicked with Gardner and Zarrouk when they visited in late March of that year. The barn interior had everything she and her fiancée wanted.
“I knew we wanted to have a small wedding at a barn, because it felt more calming, still; less like gala vibes,” Windatt said. “We loved it and were like ‘yeah, this is the place'. So we decided to book.”
The popularity of barn weddings surged in the previous decade, as more millennials came of age and decided churches or community halls just would not do it on their big days. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, The Atlantic published a piece stating more than 15 per cent of couples had planned a “rustic chic” wedding, up from about two per cent 10 years earlier.
As barn weddings became trendy, venues popped up across Simcoe County, and with good reason. Despite unprecedented growth in the past three decades, the county remains largely rural and countless barns and farms — sometimes no longer in regular use and often surrounded by pristine, picturesque scenery — were primed to be utilized by inspired entrepreneurs.
It helps that about four million Ontarians can get to the southern part of the county in about an hour by car. While hotels may be sparse south of Barrie, it is easy enough for designated drivers and shuttle busses to ferry wedding guests from any of the outdoor venues that light up the sideroads on summer weekends.
In 2023, Rustic joined the fray. That year, it hosted 23 events at its site on 1176 2nd Line, between Gilford and Lefroy. The venue’s website highlighted the barn, with more than a century-and-a-half of history, situated on a 100-acre property. Gardner also took to a local wedding website to publicize the new venue and its connection to Dream Party Planners, the business she and Zarrouk had started in 2020.
The listed phone number on Dream Party's claimed Yelp page is the same as Rustic. Its website redirects to Rustic's as well.
Pictures showed an immaculately decorated facility, with cream-coloured drapery accenting the repurposed farm amenities and freshly painted rails. The barn featured a newly made bar, built to match the existing wood frame and lengthy harvest tables that invited guests to interact with each other in ways traditional wedding venues could not match.
Secluded, yet close enough to urban areas, with picturesque views and gorgeous sunsets, it is easy to understand why so many couples fell in love with it.
“Even me, as somebody who didn’t really care much about where I got married, I was blown away by it,” said Kyle Peason, a groom whose wedding was scheduled for Aug. 20 at Rustic. “We met with Shannon and James in (November) 2023 to do our tour. We both looked at each other after the tour and we were like ‘We don’t need to tour anywhere else; this is our spot.’”
Kayleigh Marwood and her fiancée, Dave, felt the same way.
“We’ve seen other (venues) in the area, and we liked them, but when we went to Rustic, as soon as we walked up the stairs to the barn, we loved it,” she said. “We decided at that point that’s where we wanted to get married.”
Peason and his fiancée sent the $3,000 deposit as soon as they got home to Georgetown. The total cost of the venue was being covered as a wedding gift from his future mother-in-law and her husband. By January, they had pre-paid the entirety of the wedding, with documents showing the couple as a creditor owed $13,401.75.
As more couples were becoming enchanted by Rustic, it was becoming apparent the venue’s operators and property owners — who are different entities, a fact which surprised most couples involved as they had only previously spoken with Gardner and Zarrouk — had failed to secure any of the necessary permits required to legally operate in Innisfil.
Young and Pam Buckell-Heinrich are the owners of 1176 2nd Line. When reached at the property June 28, Young described he and Buckell-Heinrich as unaffiliated with the bankruptcy process and “landlords” to Rustic.
"Rustic Silo Barn Inc. was only a corporation name of the wedding planners, not the venue itself," he stressed, adding Gardner and Zarrouk were "event planners that were selling events on the property."
Harris was also clear to draw a separation between the owners of the property and the operators of the venue.
“We have no comment on what’s going on with the property itself,” he said. “We are not in communication with the landlord. We don’t know what (their) future plans are. We have not spoken to them.”
For Young, it is obvious who should take responsibility for the wedding season being cancelled on his property.
“We have been in the rezoning process for over a year with the Town of Innisfil,” he said. “We had multiple delays with the town and the goalpost started to get wider and wider for us during the permit stages.”
The holding provision being added to the property following the passing of the zoning bylaw amendment in April came as a surprise to owners and operators, setting the construction on the site back about six weeks. With that provision in place, no permits could be issued nor work completed.
“Jim and Shannon, owners of Rustic Silo Barn, along with ourselves, were excited to start this year’s wedding season in May,” Young said. “Unfortunately, because of town restrictions and delays, we were unable to open this for Jim and Shannon (and) cancel or redirect brides and grooms to other venues from surrounding communities.”
Just before Christmas, a public meeting was held on the zoning bylaw amendment application that had been filed with the town by Innovative Planning Solutions on behalf of the owner of Rustic (2865835 Ontario Inc.).
Innovative Planning is listed as a creditor in the Notice of Bankruptcy, being owed $24,708.88.
What that meeting showed — that the venue had operated in 2023 without approval from the town and that it had ignored an order to cease operations — caused some of the couples to worry.
Thomson began to reach out in early 2024 to get reassurance that her wedding would go off as planned. Throughout the spring, she and her now-husband kept in regular communication not only with the operators but also with the town, seeking updates on the progress at the site to ensure they would be able to get married at the venue on their May 19 date.
Following the April 24 council meeting, where the zoning bylaw amendment was passed, Thomson's then-fiancée reached out to the town once more to see if the wedding was going to happen.
The town’s response, Thomson said, did not make them feel optimistic, but the venue had told them they would have their permits by May 1; instead, that was the day their wedding was cancelled.
Marwood had also been looking for reassurance from Rustic through the winter and spring. As recently as the beginning of May, Marwood said she was told she had nothing to worry about. Being three weeks behind schedule would not impact an end-of-season wedding.
After Thomson's wedding was cancelled by the venue, she took to Facebook to crowd-source a new location, somehow finding the same date available. Her next step was a Google review.
“The review I originally left … said ‘This is our experience. This is what happened to us. I would just advise you to be careful when booking and make sure they have their permits,'" Thomson said. That sparked a response from Windatt, whose wedding had just been cancelled by the venue. She would not be the last bride to seek out Thomson.
In the weeks since, Thomson has heard more horror stories from local couples. After sharing her tale in a Barrie Facebook group — which she says led to the threat of legal action — more people started sending her direct messages, so much so that she started a separate group chat for affected couples to share information, creating a collective who have found strength in each other.
Thomson knows she is one of the lucky ones: every penny paid to Rustic was refunded and her May 19 ceremony took place on the day it was planned. It was the perfect day she always envisioned.
More than 50 couples are represented in that chat to date, Thomson said, a number that shocked her, as more people signed on. It’s allowed her to connect brides scrambling to find new dates with available venues in the area.
“My intention when I made this group was to help,” she said. “Everyone is so supportive in the group. Under very unfortunate circumstances, it created a community, which is really nice.”
Among them are brides and grooms, who even though they’ve been able to reschedule, find themselves with a dark cloud hanging over what should be one of the happiest days of their lives.
Marwood's wedding was set for Oct. 26 at Rustic. She said it was never officially cancelled by the venue, but she was offered an alternative site, which she and her fiancée declined. They’ve since booked elsewhere for the same day.
“Wedding planning, in general, is stressful enough,” Marwood said. “And then, to have to worry about whether or not the venue you chose a year-and-a-half ago may or may not be the venue you get married at, it’s like a whole other level of stress. This process hasn’t been enjoyable for me. I want to enjoy the last few months I have to plan my wedding and not be so stressed out. It’s been really hard.”
Marwood and her fiancée toured the Rustic venue in late 2022, months before the first wedding took place. Social media presence for Rustic began in October 2022, with a grand opening taking place in November. Those posts advertised bookings available for the 2023 and 2024 wedding seasons and began posting selfies of the happy couples who had secured dates for their dream weddings.
By the morning of June 27, 2024, most of Rustic's online presence was gone, save for a few videos on YouTube. Its website had reverted to its original state and the contact number went to voicemail.
Speaking before he received the bankruptcy notice, Peason was conflicted about the scenario in front of him. As determined as he was to ensure his mother-in-law would receive a full refund of what she paid, he wanted to have empathy for the wedding planners who he and his fiancée had fallen for.
“I do want to give them the benefit of the doubt that maybe they’re just in a business deal together that’s just gone south,” Pearson said. “The fact that Shannon and James called us and offered us an alternative option, instead of being like, ‘hey, sorry, you’re screwed,’ that kind of tells me there wasn’t the original intent to scam, to screw over, to put people out intentionally.”
Windatt has less sympathy, as the balance due for her wedding was paid at the end of May, as per the stipulations of their contract. A week later, she received word the venue would not be ready. While some money was returned, the full sum remains outstanding.
“They knew they weren’t able to (host) our wedding, took our final deposit without telling us anything, and then the following week told us they can’t have our wedding,” she said. “That’s the most infuriating out of all of this. If they had given us a little more advance, we would be less out of our pockets, but throwing this all on us 24 days before the wedding just wasn’t cool.”
Young defended the operators.
“Jim and Shannon did everything they could to help the affected couples,” he said.
He added the bankruptcy of Rustic will not mean the end of weddings at 1176 2nd Line and once construction is completed, weddings and other events are expected to be hosted on the site.
“Our building permits are now available (and) we will start construction next week to satisfy the town requirements,” Young said. “We look forward to having a safe, legal and licenced venue very soon.”
Harris stressed Rustic is doing everything it can to accommodate the affected couples. But with zero assets estimated by the bankrupt, refunds should not be expected anytime soon.
“In the most likely scenario, there will not be any dividends through the bankruptcy process, unfortunately, because there are no assets,” Harris said.
Other methods for the couples to get their money back could include a credit card chargeback, if applicable. Creditors looking for additional information on the bankruptcy process can contact the trustee directly by email at [email protected].
