By Lei Lydle Founder and Editor Last Updated: 9/8/2004 10:51:37 PM

The Emergency

Thursday September 2nd was a crazy day around here.

At approximately 12:15, I received a call from a gentlemen named Jared who told me that his brother's wedding, previously scheduled for Saturday, September 4th in Daytona Beach, Florida, had been canceled because of the evacuation for Hurricane Frances.

He told me that his brother, Clint, and soon-to-be sister-in-law, Kim, are both from the Atlanta area and still wanted to get married on Saturday. After all, they have been looking forward to this day for quite some time!

Our Emergency Wedding Service

AtlantaBridal.com was here to help!

As many of you may have seen on the site we offer a free Emergency Wedding Service to help couples when they are facing an unexpected last minute problem. In the past we have helped couples find new limo services, new florists and even caterers at the last minute. This time we had a whole wedding to plan in 2 days.

I asked Jared to email me with the details of the emergency and told him I would forward it on to my AtlantaBridal.com Preferred Professionals - nearly 500 of the best wedding vendors in Atlanta.

After receiving Jared's email I immediately forwarded it on to my AtlantaBridal.com Preferred Pros soliciting their help for this couple. And these vendors came through! Within minutes of sending the email, Jared and I both started receiving tons of calls from vendors that wanted to help out.

Approximately 150 Wedding Vendors Offered to Help

It truly was a crazy day of answering phone calls and emails trying to get this wedding planned for this couple. I believe they got the majority of the wedding planned in a matter of hours! Jared could not believe the response he received from our AtlantaBridal.com vendors. He told me that nearly 150 wedding vendors responded to the email that I sent out. He and his family are very appreciative of the help we ALL were able to offer and provide.

While you would expect the family to join together to make this day happen, you might not expect so many businesses to offer services only two days before Labor Day weekend which is traditionally a busy weekend for weddings. It is quite refreshing to find so many wedding vendors that were willing to help - many offering to work around their busy schedules and to donate services or at the very least offer large discounts. Not to mention the fact that the vendors who weren't already busy with weddings could have been spending the time with their own families.

Three AtlantaBridal.com Vendors Were Involved In This Wedding

Gary from Affordable Wedding Cakes donated a wedding cake that he described as a 3-tiered, butter pound cake with raspberry and vanilla buttercream filling. It was decorated with hand made sugar calla lilies, light lavender sugar tea roses, and a victorian design. Sounds scrumptious! The actual cake he donated is pictured below.

Premier Bartenders of Atlanta donated bartending services and according to one of the family members, "They too were fabulous. They were so helpful, so nice to everyone, and just a joy to have."

The Hollingsworth House in Fayetteville served as the event facility for the reception. By all accounts, The Hollingsworth House was a beautiful setting for the reception. And Susan Burch, the House Manager, was happy to help! She had nothing but great things to say about both families. "We just connected immediately. The families were wonderful to work with and they all seemed very pleased. The reception was beautiful. It was so nice to see how everyone just pulled together and made it an extra special day for everybody!"

Credit Goes To The Families For Pulling This Off In Two Days

As you might expect, family and friends came together in a big way to pull this wedding off. The families did the bulk of the planning and they did an excellent job rounding up vendors outside of those AtlantaBridal.com vendors who offered help.

All of the other vendors that offered services for this wedding were found through family and friends. Those vendors are listed at right to the best of my knowledge.

It is quite remarkable that the entire wedding was planned in two days and it went off without any major problems - it just says something about the professionalism of the vendors that were ultimately chosen by the families.

As for AtlantaBridal's role in all of this, we tried to help by getting the word out quickly to trusted wedding vendors. Some of our vendors were chosen and if the family had not been able to find the other vendors on their own, we had plenty offering to help. They had lots of options to make this wedding great. This is something we are happy to do for any Atlanta area couple facing an unexpected wedding crisis.

My Personal Thanks...

I would like to personally thank all of the vendors who were involved. Not only those who actually worked the wedding but also all of those who responded to my email and offered help. I would also like to thank the family members for using AtlantaBridal.com and for sending me photos and vendor information to use in this article.

The wedding took place on Saturday. Clint and Kim, our emergency bride and groom, were married and by all accounts the wedding was beautiful.

Thanks again to everyone who was involved and helped to make a special day for Clint and Kim on such short notice.

Post Wedding Update

Now for the rest of the story...Clint and Kim were originally going to set sail for the Western Caribbean on Sunday, but that was canceled on Friday morning, so Clint's father frantically set something else up for a surprise....and what a surprise it was. At the reception he told Clint and Kim that they would be going to St. Lucia for one week, leaving Sunday morning.

By Sunday evening, another hurricane had developed in the Atlantic headed right towards St. Lucia.....SURPRISE! Monday morning the resort informed all guests that the island was being evacuated. The resort was having problems getting through to the airline, and with a list a mile long of who would be leaving, the kids were getting a bit nervous. Fortunately, Clint and Kim were able to get a flight and they are now safe in Atlanta but no honeymoon.

Wow! I can't believe ANOTHER HURRICANE spoiled their honeymoon :-(

For more information on our Emergency Wedding Service, click here.