When 27-year-old Quinn Duane’s finance dumped her just a week before their wedding, the young woman decided to make the best of the situation. Instead of cancelling the wedding venue and catering, she invited the city’s homeless to partake in the elaborate feast.
Quinn herself was too devastated to attend what should have been her own wedding reception, but her family stood in for her to welcome the guests at Sacramento’s Citizen Hotel. “When I found out 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, Quinn’s mother Kari told local media. “I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this.”
The meal, prepared by the hotel’s four-star restaurant ‘Grange’, consisted of salad, appetizers, gnocchi, salmon, and steak. It was originally intended to feed 120 guests, after the $35,000 ceremony at the hotel. The wedding, sadly, was not meant to be, but Quinn and her family decided to go ahead with the meal, only with an entirely different guest list.
Photo: video caption
Several homeless people attended the dinner, including single people, families with babies, young children, and grandparents. According to Rashad Abdullah, who arrived with his wife Erika Craycraft and their five children, the meal was a real blessing. “When you’re going through a hard time and a struggle, for you to do something different with your family, it was really a blessing,” he said.
“To lose out on something so important to yourself and then give it to someone else is really giving, really kind,” Erika added.
Photo: video caption
Local reports say that Quinn and her ex-fiance Landon Borup met in July 2011 and got engaged in April last year. Borup had proposed to Quinn in the presence of her family, asking each member to read out a message he wrote for her. “My mom started by reading off a slip of paper and saying ‘Quinn, I love how generous you are,’” Quinn had written on Facebook at the time.
“This was followed by my sister saying another reason I am loved and so on… Landon had written down the reasons he loved me and passed them out to my family to read as they went around the table. My grandad read the last slip saying ‘Quinn, I love planning our future together.’ And Landon got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Truly an amazing moment!”
The couple were scheduled to leave for their honeymoon in Belize soon after the wedding, but Quinn will now be taking the non-refundable trip with her mother.
via KCRA
