Canceled wedding becomes banquet for homeless people

After a groom-to-be called off a Sacramento wedding, the bride-to-be's family decided to turn the extravagant event into a feast for those less fortunate.

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It was a phone call too shocking, too sudden for Kari Duane to believe. On the other end of the line, her 27-year-old daughter Quinn told her the wedding wasn’t going to happen.

Her fiancé had called it off.

Deposits for the $35,000 wedding were already paid and more bills were coming due. 

“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 said.

Duane found herself in a banquet hall at Sacramento’s Citizen Hotel filled with the city’s homeless Saturday.

First to arrive, nearly a half hour early, was a woman who lives in a shelter with others too old to work and too financially strapped to afford rent.

“I was thinking at that moment, if she’s the only person that comes tonight, this was worth it,” Duane said.

But more came -- single people, families, grandparents and newborns.

Rashad Abdullah arrived with his wife and five children. Plates overflowing with food, the family ate like royalty. It was a stark contrast to their usual struggle just to eat three meals a day.

“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 said.

His wife, Erika Craycraft, had the Duane family top of mind. Their charity means the world to her, she said.

“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 is the same as what you’d get at the hotel’s four-star restaurant, The Grange. In addition to appetizers, salad, cauliflower, gnocchi, salmon, and even tri-tip were served.

There was plenty to go around as 120 guests were invited before the wedding got canceled.

“This is not coming out of our kitchen. We love our chef Leo, but he wouldn’t be preparing nothing like this,” homeless mother Tamara Dotson said of the food served at the shelter.

While there are many full stomachs and smiles, the night is still painful for the Duanes. The bride-to-be chose to stay home with friends.

“I feel a lot of heartache and heartbreak for her, but I will take away something good from this, I will,” Kari Duane said.

Part of the wedding price tag includes a nonrefundable honeymoon, so Sunday mother and daughter will set off for Belize.