Couple Spark Outrage After Taking Over Cafe For Wedding Without Permission, Owners Clap Back
When you’re planning a wedding, there are usually a lot of things to figure out. The venue, the catering, the band, etc. The couple can either leave it up to the wedding planner (which equals more money spent), or try to do it all by themselves. But the frugal couple in this story found an even better way to avoid all the wedding planning hassle.
An Indianapolis-based coffee shop Mansion Society had 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
Image credits: mansionsocietyindy / Instagram
They also shared what they wrote in their e-mail to the bride
Image credits: mansionsocietyindy
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 more update on 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 bride allegedly responded by saying ‘That’s unreasonable’ and has not responded to Mansion Society’s invoice. So the owner Zorayda had some more words for the public. “Please respect all the small local businesses that are trying to stay open and provide jobs and service to the city for the better.”
The co-owner of the cafe told an Indianapolis media outlet more about the story
The owner of Mansion Society spoke to the Indianapolis Star. 31-year-old Ana Lezama together with her mother converted a Victorian-era building into a cozy cafe. Before its opening in 2021, the building was the lobby of a Central State Hospital. Just like the coffee shop owners mention in the Instagram post, they regularly host private events. This includes bridal and baby showers, engagement shoots, parties and other sorts of occasions.
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.”
After the coffee shop shared an update with a video, the wedding went viral. It’s now been covered by more than 15 news and media outlets, such as People and New York Post. Lezama said they didn’t expect for this to blow up like it did.
The drama doesn’t end here – the couple has something to say too
The Indianapolis Star tried to reach out to the bride after Lezama agreed to share her name with them. The bride declined to give an interview but linked an anonymous blog post. “We’re writing in response to the defamatory and misleading posts made by Mansion Society regarding our supposed ‘pop up’ wedding,” the post begins.
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.”
They conclude they want to move from this and wish Mansion Society would have handled this privately. “It is incredibly unfortunate that such an important moment in our lives has been colored and scarred by this social media rampage, when it could have been easily resolved in private,” they wrote.
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.”
The coffee shop also cleared some things up in the comments
Here are the reactions from people
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I work in a particularly beautiful library, and occasionally we get people trying to do their engagement shoots at the library. You should see their shocked Pickachu faces when we inform them of our venue rental fees and ask them to use the space as a library during business hours and not bother our other patrons.
I got to throw a bride out of a museum for doing this. We often have weddings and shoots in the off hours but she somehow snuck in and tried to do a full bridal shoot on the main stairs. She was BLOWN AWAY that the base entry fee didnt cover her "fair use" of the building. She got removed by our armed security lol
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Addressing the poll question here: Option 4 should be eliminated, as a coffee shop is NOT a public space. It is private property (which is why the owner/manager can kick people out/refuse service).
I was just about to comment about that lol. Regardless though, even public spaces want you to at the very least give them a warning of at least 24 hours for these things, which this business didn't even get the courtesy of.
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When my brother was married in a public park he still had to complete an application form, wait to receive approval and that approval was for a specific time, location and numbers. This cafe was a private place that the wedding invaded.
Same here. I got married at a public park and I had to choose and pay for the pavilion (we got one next to the park for the kiddos, we didn’t care if other kids outside the wedding were there. Just a place for our party’s kids to keep them entertained but still be there), parking reservations, clean-up fees, etc. It’s not like it was expensive! Back in 2009, it was $150 total. If I can spend $2k on a dress, I can pay $150 for a pavilion at a park with parking. Sheesh.
Load More Replies... I work in a particularly beautiful library, and occasionally we get people trying to do their engagement shoots at the library. You should see their shocked Pickachu faces when we inform them of our venue rental fees and ask them to use the space as a library during business hours and not bother our other patrons.
I got to throw a bride out of a museum for doing this. We often have weddings and shoots in the off hours but she somehow snuck in and tried to do a full bridal shoot on the main stairs. She was BLOWN AWAY that the base entry fee didnt cover her "fair use" of the building. She got removed by our armed security lol
Load More Replies... Addressing the poll question here: Option 4 should be eliminated, as a coffee shop is NOT a public space. It is private property (which is why the owner/manager can kick people out/refuse service).
I was just about to comment about that lol. Regardless though, even public spaces want you to at the very least give them a warning of at least 24 hours for these things, which this business didn't even get the courtesy of.
Load More Replies... When my brother was married in a public park he still had to complete an application form, wait to receive approval and that approval was for a specific time, location and numbers. This cafe was a private place that the wedding invaded.
Same here. I got married at a public park and I had to choose and pay for the pavilion (we got one next to the park for the kiddos, we didn’t care if other kids outside the wedding were there. Just a place for our party’s kids to keep them entertained but still be there), parking reservations, clean-up fees, etc. It’s not like it was expensive! Back in 2009, it was $150 total. If I can spend $2k on a dress, I can pay $150 for a pavilion at a park with parking. Sheesh.
Load More Replies...
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