A bride who gained viral attention after entering an empty wedding venue has shared the positive aspect of having her friends and family fail to attend.
Kalina Marie used TikTok to express her disappointment when none of her ‘friends’ appeared at their reception earlier this month.
Even though she extended an invitation to 100 people for the event.
The widely shared video captures Kalina and her husband stepping into the wedding venue, only to be met by their immediate family.
She captioned the video: “POV: you planned the most beautiful entrance. Just to open the doors to an empty venue.”
“This is our entrance to our Masquerade ball. The Masquerade ball that I have talked EXCESSIVELY about for the last 10 months. The same ball that I not only digitally invited over 75 people to. But ALSO spent money to send 25 beautiful invitations out to,” she elaborated in the caption.
“FIVE PEOPLE SHOWED UP!!!!!!! Like, are you kidding me!?!? As you see in the video, we enter the venue. And no one is there. The invite said 1pm.
“My mom messaged me at 1:15 that no one was there. My husband and I finally showed up at 2oclock, to 5 people. In a venue planned for 40.”
@kalina_marie_23 This is our entrance to our Masqurade ball. The Masqurade ball that I have talked EXCESSIVELY about for the last 10 months. The same ball that I not only digitally invited over 75 people to. But ALSO spent money to send 25 beautiful invitations out to. FIVE PEOPLE SHOWED UP!!!!!!! Like, are you kidding me!?!? As you see in the video, we enter the venue. And no one is there. The invite said 1pm. My mom messaged me at 1:15 that no one was there. My husband and I finally showed up at 2oclock, to 5 people. In a venue planned for 40. I dreamed that I would walk in to a bunch of people cheering us on. Hooting and hollering for us in celebration……but all you see is a woman trying to hold herself together because she had NO idea how to deal with her venue being almost completely empty. All the wasted food and drinks. All the empty tables and chairs. Every moment of my reception changed to adapt. Did we still make the most of it?? You bet your SWEET @$$ we did. But did this video just take all the good moments and shoot them out of the water for a second, F$&K yea it did 😔 It just makes me think, like, why? What did we do? Am I that bad of a person? What did my husband ever do to deserve any of this? Why couldn’t we matter enough for people to show up? I still have “friends” that haven’t even messaged me to congratulate me or tell me why they didn’t come. It truly makes me sick. I honestly can’t wrap my head around this yet. But all I know is, I have my man. My baby. And family that shows up when I need them. And for that, I will be thankful ❤️ #FAIL #fyp #whereisthelove
Despite the awkward scenario, the bride mentioned in a follow-up video that she’s thankful for realizing who her true friends are.
She said: “We’ve been having to deal with the grief of deleting a lot of people out of our lives.
“For the most part, we’ve done a lot of re-evaluating our lives and just spending a lot of time appreciating what we have and what we had.”
After viewing the video, many speculated if there was ‘more to the story’.
Kalina recounted how she had initially planned to marry her husband during the Covid pandemic – plans which had to be postponed.
She announced in January that the event would finally take place this October.
“I created a Facebook event and invited everyone I could and also sent out over 25 invitations to our elders and those not on social media to make sure they were included as well,” she explained.
Kalina noted that she got 40 RSVPs, making the no-show puzzling.
“If I could answer that, I would tell you. And no, I haven’t really received a lot of messages explaining why people weren’t there or giving me excuses,” she mentioned.
When asked if she could ‘redo’ the wedding, she responded: “We are both still dealing with anger of our own.”
She added that her husband, who is ‘extremely introverted’, finds the thought of another wedding ‘scares the cr*p out of him’.