After Bride Calls Off Wedding, She Donates Her Venue to a Couple She's Never Met
So many couples simply know that they’re meant for one another. How? Well, that’s a hard question to answer.
Shared passions. Common values. An undeniable attraction. These and many more reasons have formed the basis for a lifelong bond.
However, some couples may come to learn that they aren’t a good match or that they aren’t ready to be married. And that realization can come at the last possible minute.
It certainly did for Kolbie Sanders. According to Metro, she decided to call off her wedding just one week before the big day.
So she broke things off with her fiance. There was just one problem.
Sanders had a $3,500 deposit on the Belle Vue Wedding and Event Venue and couldn’t get a refund given such a tight cancellation. However, Good Morning America reported that the venue’s owners told 24-year-old Sanders that she could shift her date of usage to October 20.
That gave Sanders an idea: Why not donate the use of Belle Vue to another couple looking to tie the knot?
“I said, ‘Is there any way that I can still use that venue but donate it and let another couple use it?'” Sanders stated. “They were caught off guard with it.”
The owners agreed, only they had some stipulations. The venue had to know within 24 hours who would be using it, and the couple would still have to get married on October 20.
Sanders turned to the power of social media to see if she could find just such a couple. “Any couple that wants to take this donation, privately message me on here and give me a little backstory of your relationship, your engagement, your love story in general, and also add why this donation would help you,” she wrote on Facebook.
“This is for couples who can’t afford a fancy venue or for couples who are spending too much money on their kids to be able to afford a nice wedding. This is for couples who love each other and will continue to choose each other for the rest of their lives.”
And as Sanders’ post went viral, local vendors also decided to chip in and offer their services free of charge to the winning couple.
Hundreds of candidates poured in, and Sanders personally selected 45 to further review. All of their stories had touched her, but she just couldn’t decide.
So she put the names on slips of paper, put the slips of paper in a bowl, and chose randomly. The lucky couple ended up being Halie Hipsher and Matt Jones.
In the end, it seemed the perfect choice. According to Inside Edition, Hipsher had wanted to move up the wedding so that her grandfather, who had stage 4 pancreatic cancer, could see her wed.
Sanders didn’t just hand off the venue. She also made sure to stop by the wedding for photos and to celebrate with the happy couple.
“This was natural to me, I didn’t have to think about it,” she said. “I’m really glad that she won. Her reaction definitely made all of this worth it.”
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