Lamar County Alabama Old Fashioned Day Festival

In Sulligent, a small town in Lamar County, Alabama, one October Saturday is set aside each year for a celebration its organisers call Old Fashion Day. The longer wording in this article’s title, Old Fashioned Day, comes from the festival listing that prompted this piece. The Sulligent Civic Club and the local news coverage of the event both use the shorter form, Old Fashion Day, and the two versions are recorded separately throughout what follows rather than blended into a single name. What the day itself involves is easier to pin down than its spelling: arts and crafts vendors, a car and truck show, entertainment, and a BBQ tent run by the local emergency medical service.

For 2026 the celebration fell on Saturday, October 10, after a formal council vote shifted it away from its traditional weekend. That move, and the reasoning behind it, says a great deal about how seriously Sulligent treats this modest town festival. This article gathers everything the verified record supports about Old Fashion Day, notes plainly where that record is silent, and explains how the date change reshaped the autumn calendar for Sulligent and its neighbours.

About the Festival

Old Fashion Day is organised by the Sulligent Civic Club, whose president is Jay Mixon, according to local-news coverage of the Sulligent City Council meeting held on July 21, 2026. The club does not carry the day alone. The same report names the Sulligent Chamber of Commerce, the Sulligent Beautification Committee, the Sulligent Street Department, the Sulligent Fire Department, North Lamar EMS and a body of volunteers as the supporting organisations behind the event. One responsibility is assigned with unusual clarity: North Lamar EMS runs the BBQ tent and holds exclusive BBQ rights for the day, so the barbecue served at the festival comes from one designated crew rather than from competing pits.

The spread of those supporting bodies tells its own story about how the festival gets built. The Beautification Committee’s involvement points to a town that dresses itself for the occasion, the Street Department’s presence reflects the practical work of closing, cleaning and preparing public space, and the Fire Department’s role adds another uniformed service to a volunteer-heavy roster. Between the named organisations and the unnamed volunteers, nearly every arm of Sulligent’s civic life appears somewhere in the effort.

Sulligent sits in Lamar County in northwest Alabama, and it hosts this festival as a hometown, not as a seat of government. Vernon is the county seat of Lamar County, and nothing in the coverage treats Sulligent as anything other than the festival’s home ground. Two practical details are absent from every source checked: no street address for the festival has been published, and no admission price has been published either. Both gaps are addressed honestly in the planning section below.

For a useful comparison, see the Jefferson County Alabama Golden Harvest Festival for another county festival.

Quick Facts

Feature	Detail
Name used by the organisers	Old Fashion Day
Name form in this article’s title	Old Fashioned Day
Host town	Sulligent, Lamar County, Alabama
County seat	Vernon; Sulligent is not the seat
Organiser	Sulligent Civic Club
2026 date	Saturday, October 10, 2026
Traditional slot	First Saturday in October
Slot from 2026 onward	Second Saturday in October
Named attractions	Arts and crafts vendors, a car and truck show, entertainment, a BBQ tent
Admission price	None published in the sources checked

History

The documented history of Old Fashion Day is largely a story told through dates. For years the festival occupied the first Saturday in October, a pattern reflected in a secondary festival-guide site’s weekend lists, which placed Old Fashion Day in Sulligent on October 1, 2022, October 7, 2023, October 5, 2024 and October 4, 2025. Those listings form a secondary layer only, yet they line up consistently with the first-Saturday tradition described in local reporting, and they give the event a visible run of editions through the early and middle 2020s.

The turning point arrived on July 21, 2026, when the Sulligent City Council voted to move the festival to the second Saturday in October each year. The reasoning recorded in the coverage was practical rather than sentimental. The first Saturday in October clashed with Fayette’s Frog Level festival in neighbouring Fayette County, and the two celebrations were competing for the same visitors, vendors and attention on the same weekend. Moving Sulligent’s day one week later ended that direct collision. The first edition under the new arrangement took place on Saturday, October 10, 2026, and the festival-guide lists adopted the same date, matching the council’s decision.

Beyond that sequence, the record stays thin. No founding year for Old Fashion Day appears in the sources checked, and none is claimed here. What can fairly be said is that by the early 2020s the day was established enough to anchor Sulligent’s autumn, and that in 2026 its organisers and its town council regarded it as an institution worth protecting through a deliberate act of scheduling.

What to Expect

The Civic Club’s own account of the programme is short and concrete. Visitors can expect arts and crafts vendors selling their goods, a car and truck show drawing entries from around the county, and entertainment laid on for the day. Food centres on the BBQ tent, which North Lamar EMS operates under its exclusive rights, making that tent the single authorised source of barbecue at the festival and a natural gathering point by the middle of the day.

Each named element rewards a different kind of visitor. The arts and crafts vendors suit browsers who like to buy directly from the person who produced the work, while the car and truck show gives vehicle owners a place to display and gives everyone else a rolling exhibition to wander through. The entertainment fills the spaces between those anchors, so the day never depends on a single attraction to hold its crowd.

Because the supporting bodies include the fire department, the street department and the beautification committee, the event carries the character of a whole-town production rather than a fenced commercial show. The same departments that serve Sulligent through the rest of the year help stage its festival day, and volunteers fill the gaps between them. No published timetable of performances and no official vendor count exists in the sources checked, so the shape of the day is best understood as a relaxed town celebration that unfolds at its own pace, rather than a tightly programmed exhibition working to a printed schedule.

Planning Your Visit

Begin with the date, because the date has changed. From 2026 onward Old Fashion Day sits on the second Saturday in October, so anyone working from older listings that show the first Saturday will turn up a week early. The 2026 edition fell on October 10, and future editions follow the new rule rather than the old one, however long the first-Saturday habit lasted.

Admission needs equally honest handling. No admission price for this festival has been published in any source checked for this article. That silence is not the same thing as a promise of free entry, and no such promise is made here. The sensible course is to bring ordinary spending money for the craft stalls and for food from the BBQ tent, and to treat any entry arrangements as something to confirm through local Sulligent notices closer to the day. No street address is published for the event either. It is a town festival, so aim for the centre of Sulligent and follow the activity, the lined-up show vehicles and the smoke from the barbecue tent.

A Sample Itinerary for Festival Day

Start by walking the vendor rows while the day is still fresh, when the arts and crafts stalls are easiest to browse and the people behind them have time to talk about what they made. Move on to the car and truck show next, giving the polished paintwork and opened bonnets proper attention before the crowd thickens around the most popular entries. By the middle of the day, make the BBQ tent your anchor. North Lamar EMS holds the exclusive barbecue rights, so its tent is the one place to eat the festival’s signature food, and a queue there is part of the occasion rather than a problem.

Leave the entertainment for the stretch after eating, when a town festival settles into its social rhythm and neighbours stop to visit between attractions. Finish with a second, slower pass along the craft stalls for anything you talked yourself out of during the morning round, and let the day end without a timetable, which suits the way Sulligent stages this celebration.

How Old Fashion Day Compares With Nearby Events

Two comparisons help sharpen what this festival is. The first is with Fayette’s Frog Level festival in Fayette County, the event whose first-Saturday timing Old Fashion Day used to collide with every October. Sulligent’s 2026 council vote separated the two by a week, so they no longer fight over the same Saturday, and a keen festival-goer could now attend both instead of choosing between them.

The second comparison sits much closer to home, and it matters because the names are confusingly alike. Sulligent also has a smaller gathering called Old-Fashioned Night, a Fifth Quarter Street Celebration held on Front Street on Friday, October 23, 2026, after the homecoming football game. Despite the resemblance in naming, that evening is a different event from Old Fashion Day, with a different setting, a different occasion and a different scale, and the two should never be merged into one festival in anyone’s diary or reporting.

A Checklist Before You Set Out

• Confirm the date against the second-Saturday-in-October rule rather than older first-Saturday listings
• Carry payment for craft stalls, small makers and handmade goods
• Plan your main meal around the North Lamar EMS BBQ tent
• Allow unhurried time for the car and truck show entries
• Check local Sulligent notices near the day for any entry arrangements, since none are published well in advance
• Keep Old Fashion Day separate in your diary from the smaller Old-Fashioned Night later in October

Beyond the Festival Grounds

A trip to Old Fashion Day can anchor a wider look at Lamar County. Vernon, the county seat, is the county’s centre of government and the natural companion stop on a visit built around Sulligent’s festival. Fayette County, whose Frog Level festival now sits a week apart from Sulligent’s day, lies close enough that October in this corner of Alabama can easily become a two-festival month for travellers who plan around both dates. The homecoming football culture that produced Sulligent’s separate Old-Fashioned Night also colours the season, reminding visitors that autumn here revolves around school, sport and small-town gathering as much as around any single Saturday.

Why This Day Matters to Sulligent

There is also a regional dimension to protect. Northwest Alabama’s small towns sit close enough together that their festivals draw from overlapping circles of families, vendors and day-trippers, and the Frog Level clash showed what happens when two of them claim the same Saturday. By moving, Sulligent kept its own crowd, respected its neighbour’s event and gave the region a fuller October instead of a divided one.

Old Fashion Day’s significance lies in how it is made. A civic club leads it, a chamber of commerce and a beautification committee support it, the street and fire departments help stage it, and the emergency medical service feeds it under exclusive barbecue rights. Few small-town festivals display their civic wiring quite so openly. The 2026 date vote underlined the point: when the celebration’s future collided with a rival event, the town council treated the festival as something worth a formal decision, a public meeting and a permanent change to the calendar. That is the behaviour of a community protecting an institution, not merely filling a weekend.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which name do the organisers themselves use for the celebration?

They use Old Fashion Day. That is the form carried by the Sulligent Civic Club and by local news coverage of the festival. The wording Old Fashioned Day, used in this article’s title, comes from the listing that prompted the piece, and the two forms are deliberately kept separate rather than merged.

Why did Sulligent shift the festival to a later weekend?

The city council voted on July 21, 2026, to move the day from the first Saturday in October to the second Saturday each year. The stated purpose was to stop competing with Fayette’s Frog Level festival in Fayette County, which occupied the same first-Saturday slot.

Who is in charge of the barbecue on the day?

North Lamar EMS. The emergency medical service runs the BBQ tent and holds exclusive BBQ rights for the festival, so barbecue at the event comes from that one crew. The arrangement is part of the wider team effort that also involves the Civic Club, the chamber of commerce and several town departments.

Has an entry charge for visitors been announced anywhere?

No admission price has been published in any source checked for this article. Because the organisers have not stated a charge, this article neither quotes a price nor promises free entry; visitors should confirm arrangements through local notices near the date and bring money for vendors and food regardless.

What to Expect From the Next Lamar County Alabama Old Fashioned Day Festival

How often is Lamar County Alabama Old Fashioned Day Festival held?

Old Fashion Day returns each October as a single-day town celebration in Sulligent. Its organisers, the Sulligent Civic Club, stage it once in the autumn with support from the chamber of commerce, town departments, North Lamar EMS and volunteers, and no second edition in any year appears in the record checked.

When is the next Lamar County Alabama Old Fashioned Day Festival?

Following the council’s 2026 decision, the next edition falls under the new rule: the second Saturday in October 2027. Anyone planning ahead should still confirm the exact date through the Civic Club or local Sulligent notices, since the second-Saturday rule, rather than any single printed date, is what the town formally adopted.

Will the dates change?

They already have, once. The move from the first Saturday to the second Saturday in October was made by a council vote on July 21, 2026, specifically to escape the clash with Fayette’s Frog Level festival. A further change would presumably need the same kind of deliberate decision, so the second-Saturday pattern is the one to plan around unless Sulligent announces otherwise.

Old Fashion Day asks very little of its visitors: the right October Saturday, a walk among the craft stalls, a slow look at the show vehicles and a plate from the one authorised barbecue tent. In return it offers a clear picture of how a small Lamar County town organises its own celebration, protects it when the calendar turns against it, and feeds the whole crowd through the crew that answers its emergency calls the rest of the year.