An Indianapolis-based coffee shopMansion Societyhad quite an unusual Sunday last week. A wedding party of 20-30 people came in and proceeded to, well, have a wedding. With an officiate, photographer and all the other jazz. The ‘pop-up wedding’ disrupted the coffee shop’s business quite a bit. So they felt validated in sharing this bizarre occurrence on their Instagram page, which snowballed into a whole ‘pop-up wedding saga.’
A coffee shop can be a great venue for a small 20 to 30-people wedding
Image credits:Emma Bauso / Pexels (not the actual photo)
This couple seemed to think so, but somehow forgot to let the owners know they would be having a wedding at their coffee shop
Image credits:mansionsocietyindy
Image credits:mansionsocietyindy / Instagram
The owners of Mansion Society posted an update two days later
They also shared what they wrote in their e-mail to the bride
Four days later, the Mansion Society Instagram posted one more, and, hopefully, the last update in this saga
The mother of the mother-daughter owner duo of Mansion Society posted one moreupdateon the coffee shop’s Instagram on January 6th. She gave a little behind-the-scenes of the organization of the cafe and commented on the whole wedding debacle.
“Over the course of two years, we have learned a lot about being in the customer service industry and as the saying goes ‘The customer is always right,'” the co-owner wrote. “In this case, I make an exception.”
“There are some who accuse us of ruining a wedding [day’s] joy & memories. We decided to post an update because the bride offered a ‘donation of $200’ without an apology or accepting responsibility for the event without consent after the Central State building manager contacted her,” the co-owner went on.
The co-owner of the cafe told an Indianapolis media outlet more about the story
The co-owner Lezama recalled for the Indianapolis Star how the now infamous wedding started. “The officiant literally said, ‘We are gathered here today,’ so there was like no time for a reaction or anything. They literally walked in for the wedding to start.”
Ana also said that she expected a small group to come to sign wedding documents. What she didn’t expect was a whole wedding to take place. The Mansion Society owners and staff said they take the most issue with the whole thing being a surprise.
After the officiating, the wedding continued as the staff had to deal with the chaos. The party was blocking pathways for other customers trying to enter. Therefore it wasn’t just stress – the coffee shop lost business because of this as well.
The party moved around furniture and asked the staff to look after their things. “They were asking us to take their stuff, not in a rude way, but in a way as if the space was theirs,” Lezama told IndyStar. “I think that they thought that the bride did have some kind of agreement or arrangement with us.”
The drama doesn’t end here – the couple has something to say too
The author proceeds to tell their side of the story. They claim to have contacted the building manager 3 weeks prior. They admit saying the guest number would only be 8 and claim there were only 14 on the wedding day – only six more.
They claim the lease manager for Mansion Society only requested that the wedding party all be paying customers. And the blog post author claims to have agreed. They say they offered the $200 in good faith because of the exceeded guest count.
“We stopped communicating when it came to our attention that Mansion Society had taken to social media prior to even initiating private conversations with us,” the person goes on in the blog post. “It was clear that the private discussions were not being held in good faith to come to an amicable resolution.”
The Indianapolis Star also spoke with the lease manager of the coffee shop Isaac Barrow. He thinks this was probably a miscommunication issue. “Maybe in their mind when they said, ‘We’re gonna sign some wedding documents,’ we should have been prepared for some sort of wedding proceeding to go down. But that’s definitely not what was communicated.”
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