By STEVEN JUPITER
BRANDON—2026 will mark 25 years since Shelly and Doug Sawyer bought Brandon’s iconic Lilac Inn on Park Street. Thousands of guests. Hundreds of weddings. Innumerable memories.
“I’ve never lived anywhere else so long,” said Shelly in a recent conversation on the front porch behind the elegant arcade that gave the place its original name of “The Arches” when it was built as a summer home by the wealthy Farr family in 1909. “But 25 years as an innkeeper is a long time. I’ll still have to have Vermont in my life, but I’m ready for a new adventure.”
For the past few years, since Doug’s passing in 2020, Shelly has been running the inn with the assistance of her adult children, Ashley and Tyson, and a loyal staff. But at 76, it’s time to move on. The Lilac Inn is officially on the market.
“In 2001, Doug and I were living a corporate life in Connecticut,” recalled Shelly. “We’d moved a lot. We even lived in England for a bit. But we were always someone’s employees. We thought it would be nice to have our own business.”
When their kids were in college, they decided to ditch the rat race and enter the hospitality industry. The Sawyers had no experience running an inn, but Doug had his MBA and Shelly loved to cook and entertain. They jumped right in.
“I’m not really a winter person,” said Shelly. “I had wanted to go south to somewhere like Savannah, GA or Charleston, SC. But Doug was from New Hampshire and wanted to look in New England.”
Instead of a quaint little Southern guesthouse, they ended up purchasing an 11,000-square-foot mansion in Vermont.
“It ticked all the boxes for me,” she said.
The complex had been owned by Michael and Melanie Shane, who had done extensive renovations and changed the name from The Arches to The Lilac Inn.
“The Shanes had done a lot of work on the place,” said Shelly. “They were a contractor and an architect. They put in a new kitchen, new stairs, and filled in a swimming pool that used to be in the rear courtyard. They’re the ones who really made it a wedding venue.”
Shelly had wanted to do weddings, but the Sawyers also tried establishing a high-end restaurant at the Inn as well. Café Provence wouldn’t open in town for another few years at that point and the idea of fine dining in Brandon seemed promising.
“The chef we hired started on 9/11,” she said. That date may have been an omen, as the restaurant didn’t take off and the Sawyers eventually closed it to focus on weddings and other events, in addition to the usual weekend guests they love to entertain.
“We had to be a team to run the Inn,” said Shelly, noting that the pressures of hospitality sometimes strained their relationship. “There were days we fought, but we sorted out our strengths and worked it out.”
The Sawyers got into the swing of things and made the place their own.
“We got more and more comfortable being ourselves with our guests and sharing our own story,” she said. “Guests were always very curious about the history of the house, but we started becoming more comfortable answering their questions about ourselves.”
The Sawyers recognized that they themselves were a central part of their guests’ experience.
“Doug used to say that people booked their weddings with us just because of me,” she laughed.
The Inn has a lot of repeat guests, and couples who married there often come back for anniversaries, birthdays, or just weekends away.
“A couple who got married here last year just had their baby shower here,” Shelly said with pride.
The Sawyers became friendly with other innkeepers in the area—there used to be 40 such properties—but it was Louis Pattis at the Brandon Inn and Tony Clark at the Blueberry Hill Inn who really took Doug under their wings and showed him the ropes.
“There was a camaraderie among us,” Shelly said. The different establishments would often coordinate when one was full and more rooms were needed. This continued when Judy Bunde moved to Brandon and opened the Inn on Park Street in the former Moffett house just a few doors away from the Lilac. The Inn on Park Street is now owned by Barbara and Scott Scribner.
Both Shelly and Doug were diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Though Shelly conquered hers, Doug’s returned in 2017. He ended up passing in 2020, adding personal tragedy to the already brutal realities of COVID in the hospitality industry.
“It was hard,” said Shelly. “A lot of businesses like ours didn’t make it. We lost so many bookings and weddings. And when things opened up again, events were very small for a long while.”
But things eventually turned around. The last few years have been busy for the Lilac, though the business is unpredictable by nature.
“We had three couples cancel their weddings this year because they broke up,” said Shelly. “That’s never happened to us before.”
But she’s booked several other weddings, even into next year. And for Shelly, weddings are really where she has an opportunity to shine.
“I love being creative. I love when the couple wants to try new things. Young people are so much more knowledgeable about food now. I love to customize menus. I want it to be memorable. We had a couple recently who wanted us to do vegan Southern comfort food. We made it work and it was great. Another couple wanted their cake topper to be a pair of coyotes because they ‘mate for life.’ All I was able to find was two coyote Beanie Babies. The bride loved them.”
But running an inn also means having to deal with guests’ emergencies.
“One guest had been here on a bicycle tour of Vermont and came downstairs complaining of indigestion,” recalled Shelly. “I ended up driving him to Porter Hospital and it turned out he was having a heart attack. A woman was 5 months pregnant and went into labor here. I drove her and her wife to Rutland Hospital and then all the way up to UVM in Burlington. She ended up losing the baby. I picked them up in Burlington in the morning. That kind of personal connection is what makes an inn different than a hotel.”
And wedding celebrations often produce drunken guests.
“We have found vomit in some pretty strange places,” Shelly laughed. “One time a bunch of male guests were in one of the downstairs men’s rooms and somehow broke the urinal. Water ended up pouring out, all over everything. I didn’t know how to shut it off. Fortunately, we got it cleaned up.”
The Sawyers put a lot of themselves into the place and Shelly is hoping to find a new owner willing to do the same.
“I’m happy to help a new owner get settled,” she said.
“I do consider Brandon my home,” Shelly added. “I love seeing how it’s grown and changed. Our guests say, ‘What a little treasure this town is.’ I don’t know how many little towns like Brandon are still around.”
