After her fiance called off the wedding, a devastated bride-to-be in California turned lemons into lemonade — and a full banquet — for Sacramento’s homeless.
Kari Duane told CNN affiliate KCRA she couldn’t believe it when her 27-year-old daughter Quinn called her to tell her that the groom-to-be had called off the wedding.
“When we found out … 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 said of Saturday’s banquet.
Deposits had already been made for the $35,000 wedding so instead of canceling and letting the food go to waste, the bride’s family invited the city’s homeless to dine at Sacramento’s Citizen Hotel on Saturday.
People old and young came to enjoy the appetizers, salad, cauliflower, gnocchi, salmon and tri-tip meant for the 120 wedding guests.
Rashad Abdullah and his wife and five children, who usually struggle for enough food to feed their whole family three times a day, came 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,” Abdullah told the affiliate.
The Duanes’ charity meant the world to Abdullah’s wife, Erika Craycraft.
“To lose out on something so important to yourself and then give it to someone else is really giving, really kind,” Craycraft said
The food was the same as the hotel’s four-star restaurant, The Grange.
Homeless mother Tamara Dotson told KCRA that the meal was a real treat.
“This is not coming out of our (shelter) kitchen. We love our chef (at the shelter), but he wouldn’t be preparing nothing like this,” said Dotson.
Even though the Duanes were able to turn the wedding disaster into something good, the bride-to-be decided to stay home, according to KCRA.
“I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this, I will,” said mother Kari Duane.
Father David Duane applauded his wife and daughter.
“This was an awful moment, but they have incredible hearts. … My wife deserves a lot of credit,” he said.
Soon after the banquet, mother and daughter left for Belize on what was to have been a honeymoon, so the nonrefundable trip didn’t go to waste either.
“They took this situation and did something nice for others and then took the red eye out of here to Belize,” he said.