Bride Calls Off Wedding, Feeds Homeless at the Reception

Photo: Sarah Cummins, 25, who called off her wedding and fed the homeless at the $30K reception.

This story was just too good to pass up and not pass along. It's taken (as is the photo) from this msn.com article, which you can access by clicking here. The author of the article is Maureen C. Gilmer.

The nitty-gritty is that Cummins and her mother spent upwards of thirty grand to pay for the wedding and invitation. She worked overtime and long hours for years, she says, to pay for this. One wonders why the groom-to-be isn't said to have done the same thing, which is perhaps indicative of why the wedding was called off to begin with. Unfortunately, she's not saying. And kudos to Cummins for not airing out that dirty laundry once the press and the internet descended upon her, by the way. Many of us have been less than discrete about verbalizing the incidents that have greatly bothered us, and naming the names of those who did them to us. Mine's in the memoir, baby!

So she had a non-refundable contract with the Ritz Charles, which must be near Indianapolis, where this article was first published. Sounds...ritzy. All that food for 170 guests--and kudos to Cummins for sending out reverse RSVPs to those 170 people, and for even knowing 170 people to invite to her reception, I suppose. I'm not sure I even know 170 people. Well, okay, I do, but only about 5 of them would be invited to any reception of mine.

Apparently, this last-second wedding and reception cancellation has happened before. I know this because a) that has to be why this stuff is non-refundable to begin with, because last-second cancellations happen so often that it has to be paid for, period; and b) last year I was told a story about a woman of about this age, in my neck of the woods, who called off her wedding and reception. She and her mother paid over $40,000 for everything, including the reception spot in the Caribbean. But the guy turned out to be slime, which the teller of this story, and her parents, and the bride-to-be's friends, and possibly innocent passersby and concerned motorists--all told this woman that her husband was slime and she'd be better off not being married to him. This woman agreed with them about two weeks before the scheduled wedding and reception. Anyway, they went on the vacation anyway, and everyone who was supposed to go still went (except for the groom-to-be, who was apparently in a jail cell), and they all had a helluva time, as well they should, since the whole thing caused a lifetime of PTSD and stress, and cost over forty grand.

But I digress. What did Sarah Cummins do? Well, she called local homeless shelters and invited 170 homeless people to the ritzy Ritz Charles. They dined on...Well, I'll finally quote the article:

"On the menu are bourbon-glazed meatballs, goat cheese and roasted garlic bruschetta, chicken breast with artichokes and Chardonnay cream sauce and, yes, wedding cake."

Sounds good to me! And the surroundings?

"The dinner will take place in the hotel's garden pavilion because Cummins said she always wanted an outdoor wedding but didn't want to risk the weather...She and her mother will arrive early Saturday to set up the centerpieces they designed themselves — gold Eiffel Tower vases with roses."

And afterwards? What about the honeymoon?

"When it's over, Cummins said she's leaving on her honeymoon Sunday to the Dominican Republic — alone — before returning for classes at Purdue."

What a great idea! I suspect Sarah Cummins will get many more marriage proposals after this. An attractive woman with that much money to spend on a reception who's smart enough and rich enough to go to Purdue? Where in Indianapolis did this happen?

Jaws Re-Release

Photo: The iconic movie poster, from the movie's Wikipedia page.

I saw the re-release of Jaws at a local Showcase Cinema today--the kind where there's a waitress and you can order from a menu.  Nice, but weird.  Very few people ordered anything; but two who did were, of course, sitting beside me, and had the poor waitress running up and down the aisle in front of me all night.  Grrrrrrrr...

But the movie was worth it.  The film holds up very well after all these years--40 of them!!!  And, no, I didn't see this movie when it first came out, as that was a bit before my movie-going time.

And so a few quick thoughts:

--I'm not sure Jaws could be made today, and I mean that as a slap to today's movie-going public.  It has too few shocks, and they're built up with very solid character-building and reality-defining that unfortunately take quite a bit of time.

--The running time of about 2.5 hours is just a bit too long for a horror movie today.  Fantasy / sci-fi pics--Yes, those can still be long, especially if there's a lot of special effects.

--A character-sketch horror movie just wouldn't fly today.  The Exorcist could be thrown in here, too.

--Jaws the shark (or Bruce, if you're in the know) was effectively handled as Stoker handled Dracula: More scary the less you see him.  If you read the original Dracula, you'll notice you see the Count frequently in the beginning and in the end, and only fleetingly in the middle.

--I remembered that Hooper's heart was broken my Mary Ellen Moffat, because I'm messed up like that.  I also knew the shark's name was Bruce, and that the book's author--Peter Benchley--was the reporter on the beach.  But those last two are common.  But Mary Ellen Moffat?  That's messed up.

--Roger Ebert loved it in 1975.  Gene Siskel didn't.  Like, at all.

--I have the autograph of Susan Backlinie, who was Chrissie, the famous blonde attack victim in the opening.  And so when I had a conversation with someone about it, I said, "That's Susan Backlinie," and I got a weird look.  She was at a recent convention in Providence.  You can see a lot of props from Jaws at one of my past blog entries about the convention:

  http://stevenebelanger.blogspot.com/2014/07/jaws-and-me.html

--I read today that Quint's place was the only set made for the film.  Everything else was on location.

--Mostly in Martha's Vineyard, of course.

--Spielberg returned to this area to shoot Amistad in Newport.  I know---I was an extra.

--I spoke to him a little bit.  Fascinating guy.  Wore a super-heavy winter jacket in the super-hot Newport courthouse, with all the lights, cameras, and everything else generating even more heat.

--Robert Shaw was the fourth actor offered the role.  He and Richard Dreyfuss apparently did not get along.

--Shaw's Indianapolis monologue was improvised, as was Orson Welles's famous "Cuckoo Clock" monologue from The Third Man.  I wouldn't be surprised if Marlon Brando's in Apocalypse Now was, too.

--Peter Benchley wrote some articles a few years after Jaws came out, explaining how harmless great whites really are, and how most of their attacks are accidents.  I'm gonna guess he cashed all the book and movie royalty checks first.  I'm so young, yet so cynical.

--3 Biggest Differences Between Book and Film: In the book, Hooper's character gets killed by the shark, gets an arrow through the neck while in the shark's mouth, and sleeps with Brody's wife.