A California bride turned her canceled wedding into a opportunity for good. Days before her wedding, her future groom backed out of the wedding. And it was too close to the wedding date for the bride’s family to get a refund on the reception. So instead of just walking away from the massive cost, they decided to pay it forward.
The bride’s parents reached out to a local community organization and invited the local homeless community to come enjoy the meal. This is proof that you can turn a negative to a positive.
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Bride-to-be Quinn Duane, who lives in Sacramento, California, found out from her fiancé days before their 2015 wedding that it wasn’t happening. Naturally, Duane was devastated. But not just because she wasn’t getting married; now her family had a $35,000 wedding planned that was non-refundable.
“When I found out on Monday that the wedding would not be taking place, it just seemed like, of course, this would be something that we would do to give back,” Kari Duane, the bride’s mom, told KCRA. “I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this.”
Duane reached out to community group Next Move, which invited 90 homeless people to attend the reception. They had planned the canceled wedding for 120 people, so they knew that everyone would be well fed. The people who showed up got to eat a delicious meal of salmon, tri-tip, appetizers, salad, gnocchi, and cauliflower.
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Rashad Abdullah brought his wife and their five children to the meal. “When you’re going through a hard time and a struggle for you to get out to do something different and with your family, it was really a blessing,” he told KCRA.
Kari Duane called the entire situation “heartwarming,” pointing out that she was “making something good out of a bad situation.”
While Quinn didn’t attend the event that would have been her wedding reception, she did later speak to KCRA. “I think the most overwhelming thing was to see how many people were positively impacted,” she said. “When you have a ton of food, what better way than to give it to those who need it?”
