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Wedding industry bands together to help displaced brides-to-be

Saturday morning, a popular wedding venue in Cullman - Brick Haven Event Center - burned to the ground leaving dozens of brides-to-be scrambling to make other arrangements.

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CHRIS DAVIS
CULLMAN, ALA. — Saturday morning, a popular wedding venue in Cullman - Brick Haven Event Center - burned to the ground leaving dozens of brides-to-be scrambling to make other arrangements.

"It hit me, I've got to do something," says Jana Waldrop, an Arab-based wedding planner.

That's where Jana comes in.

"There's nowhere really to call and what to do, so I took it upon myself to myself to do that and make a huge post and the more I could get on there the more it kept getting shared and shared," she says.

In just a few days, Jana has already found new venues for 10 brides that have ceremonies coming up.

"We have had to move some on Sunday's but right now the girls are just automatically thankful they can find a place," says Waldrop.

She says most of the brides won't end up paying her or using her services, but that doesn't matter.

"It's about helping those girls who needed help," she says.

Lazy G in Union Grove is one of the many local venues that are quite literally opening up their doors to make sure couples have a place to say "I Do".

"We've tried to accommodate them as close to what they had booked with Brick Haven as possible," says Melinda Griffin, the owner of Lazy G's.

She says this is one of the rare times she's perfectly okay with being someone's second choice.

Melinda and her husband are actually foregoing down time to let some of these weddings stay on the same weekend.

"We had originally planned to go out of town so we cleared our calendar for those dates," says Griffin.

They've also decided to not charge a dime until everything is sorted out.

"We're not requiring the down payment, once they settle with Brick Haven, you know because they had insurance , things will come back out to their clients," she says.

These women say it's the least they can do to ensure these fairy tale weddings can still rise from the ashes.

"And they see, okay my wedding's not ruined, I'm getting married to the man I love and everything else will fall into place," says Waldrop.

Jana says all of the wedding venues in the area that she's spoken to, have agreed to forego a fee until Brick Haven's insurance policy refunds all the couples.

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