After nobody showed up to Annette and Lior's big day, the bride's friend stepped in to help out...
It's the kind of thing that brides and grooms have recurring nightmares about: the idea that after spending thousands of pounds on venue hire, suit hire and bows-that-go-round-back-of-the-chairs-for-no-fathomable-purpose hire, nobody turns up on your big day.
But for Annette and Lior Solomon who live in Israel, that's exactly what happened, after Annette's father passed away and their guests assumed that the wedding wouldn't be going ahead.
Apparently it all comes down to a traditional Jewish belief that joyous events should be put on hold while you're in mourning. Meaning that hundreds of Annette and Lior's guests believed the couple would have called the whole thing off. And, er, decided not to double check just in case.
Thankfully, a couple of relatives did show up. And one of Annette's cousins saw the empty venue, she decided to do whatever she could to give Annette and Lior the wedding they'd always dreamed of.
Taking to Facebook, Rivka called on her friends to cancel their plans for that evening and come along to celebrate with the happy couple instead.
'The bride lost both her parents in the last two years,' she wrote. 'Her father passed away a month ago, and now there is no one there except for a few relatives. You don't need a gift, you don't need money. Just come fill the auditorium, fulfill a mitzvah, and make a bride and groom happy.'
'What happened was that I arrived at the wedding and saw that it was almost ten at night and there were no people,' Rivka has since explained to YnetNews. 'I thought I had gone to the wrong place. There were only ten people. I saw my uncle and asked, 'Where is everyone?' He told me, 'they didn't come.' And then I told myself that I would start posting. So it passed through word of mouth and more than two thousand people came. These are the Israeli people at their best. The groom and bride cried. Understand, at the wedding canopy they were alone. After the story was published, people came to make them happy.'
Dana Yaakovian, one of the attendees who responded to request says the party was worth any effort on her part. 'I live in Yavne and someone from Yavne shared the post on Facebook and we decided to come,' she explained. 'I arrived with my boyfriend, Liad Hajaj, to the event space. We saw the post at 10:30pm and arrived after half an hour. There were already hundreds of people when we arrived, lots of music and people. People didn't stop arriving until midnight and made the groom and bride happy.'
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