Indiana woman invites homeless families to dinner after hotel refuses refund for her canceled wedding reception

An Indiana bride-to-be, who cancelled her wedding reception at a pricey hotel, is not going to let all of the food and cake go to waste. Instead, she is inviting local homeless families for dinner after failing to get her deposit back.

According to the Indy Star,  Purdue student Sarah Cummins, 25, and her fiance. Logan Araujo, had a wedding planned at the Ritz Charles in Carmel, Indiana with a budget of $30,000 to cover the whole thing.  After canceling the wedding -- for unspecified reasons -- Cummins was unable to get her deposit back.

“It was really devastating to me. I called everyone, canceled, apologized, cried, called vendors, cried some more, and then I started feeling really sick about just throwing away all the food I ordered for the reception,” Cummins explained, saying she has worked an event planner at Ritz to rework the evening.

According to Cummins, she has arranged for buses to picks up homeless families at local shelter for the dinner this weekend, where the attendees will dine on bourbon-glazed meatballs, goat cheese and roasted garlic bruschetta, chicken breast with artichokes and Chardonnay cream. And, wedding cake, of course.

Cummins stated that they have moved the dinner to an outside pavilion at the hotel --which describes itself as providing "innovative, upscale and superior event services to central Indiana" -- and where she had intended to be married.

“I will at least have some kind of happy memory to pull from. I’ve worked so many weekends and so much overtime to pay for this, I wanted to make sure it would be the perfect wedding,” Cummins explained, adding that she plans to stay for the dinner with her mom and her two sisters as long as she doesn't become too "emotional" to stay.

Cummins' fiance approved of her plan, saying, "she was able to make a selfless and very thoughtful decision in such a hard time.”