Imagine this – you have been planning your dream wedding for over two years. Your venue is booked at a fancy hotel; your invites are sent to all your friends and family but then with an unfortunate series of events, you are forced to cancel the entire thing. That’s exactly what happened for a 25-year-old bride named Sarah.
The wedding extravaganza cost over $30,000. To make matters worse, the contract for the venue at the Ritz Charles and the dinner for 170 guests was nonrefundable. The bride was completely heartbroken to see everything go to waste.
The bride thought of a genius plan. Instead of letting the nonrefundable dinner go to waste, she decided to hold her reservation still. Sarah invited all the local homeless to the Ritz Charles to enjoy a fantastic venue and a fabulous free meal. She decided there was no point to letting all the planning and money go to absolutely nothing. Even though her dream wedding did not pan out the way she planned, Sarah turned a not-so-great situation into something amazing.
She contacted homeless shelters nearby to invite people to the dinner. Buses picked up shelter residents and their families to bring them to the venue. The homeless and their families were super excited to attend the reception. They dressed up enjoyed a lovely evening eating fantastic food. The menu consisted of bourbon-glazed meatballs, goat cheese and roasted garlic bruschetta, chicken breast with artichokes and Chardonnay cream sauce and of course a wedding cake. The event space was in the hotel’s enclosed garden pavilion. Sarah decorated the space with the centerpieces her and her mother originally designed for her wedding.
She made a complicated situation (having to cancel your wedding) into something amazing. Sarah is an inspiration for turning such a negative into a positive. Her former fiancé said he was proud of Sarah for her good deed. With the recent death of his mom, he asked for the reception to be held in her honor.
“I’m happy through my grief and also Sarah’s that she was able to make a selfless and very thoughtful decision in such a hard time,” said Araujo.
Sarah’s act of kindness not only gave the homeless and their families a delicious hot meal, but it also gave them a fun night with their loved ones. She spoke very humbly about her incredible act of kindness, “I will at least have some kind of happy memory to pull from,” she said. “I wanted to make sure it would be the perfect wedding.”
The couple had planned to honeymoon in the Dominican Republic. Sarah’s ex-fiancé kindly transferred his ticket for the honeymoon trip to Sarah’s mom. Now Sarah and her mom plan to visit the Dominican Republic together instead.
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