Canceled Wedding Turns Reception Into Party for Homeless

The three long vehicles that pulled up to the chic Sodo Park event venue were not limousines that had glided over from some wealthy neighborhood, but battered yellow school buses that had labored through the rain and darkness for 10 miles down unlovely Aurora Avenue.

The people who spilled out from the buses, half of them little kids, were from the homeless shelter called Mary's Place. And as they entered the softly-lit, high-ceiling hall to find large tables set immaculately for dinner — complete with candles and floral centerpieces — they stepped into someone else's dream.

For this was to have been Dana Olsen's wedding reception.

Instead, it became a feast with a live band and dancing, a one-night-only luxury for strangers Olsen had never met, a gift from her to families who have very little.

ADVERTISING"I'm going to have a bad day," she told her best friend Katie McCary, who was to have been her maid of honor. "Other people might as well have a good night."

Instead of getting married, Dana spent the day hiking with her dad near Palm Springs, California.

Pre-party primping

The buses had set off Jan. 16 from the Mary's Place emergency shelter on North 130th Street, just off Aurora Avenue North.

There, the nonprofit has been granted, as a gift from the city of Seattle, a one-year lease on an abandoned Pi Bank building, an ugly, four-story monolith with coffin-shaped windows.

On the ground floor, blue plastic curtains screen off rectangular areas, just big enough for a mattress on the floor, granting a modicum of privacy to the families who sleep behind them.

ADVANCE FOR THE WEEKEND OF JAN. 23 - In this Saturday, Jan. 16, 2016 photo, big brother Tyrus Gilbertson whisks around sister Corrine, 6, as they dance to tunes from the Michael Benson Band during a special event donated to people staying at Mary's Place shelter at Sodo Park in Seattle. (Lindsey Wasson/The Seattle Times via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

picture: www.queenieau.com...