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A gay Kansas couple found what they thought was the perfect wedding venue, until the owner told them her “deeply held religious beliefs” prevented her from celebrating their marriage.
Wichita residents Ali Waggy and Jessica Robinson, who got engaged in July, toured the Barn at Grace Hill, a venue in Newton, earlier this month, the Wichita Eagle reported. Even before touring, Waggy said she knew she wanted to get married there, because “their barn is beautiful.”
After the tour, Waggy said she followed up with an email about moving forward with booking the venue, but she received a “heart-crushing” response from the venue owner, Amanda Balzer, the Eagle reported.
“While our deeply held religious beliefs keeps us from celebrating anything but marriage between a man and woman, we desire to serve everyone equally and do not want to keep anyone from using our building who would like to,” Balzer wrote, according to a screenshot of the email that Waggy shared in a Facebook post Jan. 8. “Our hearts are to serve, regardless of race, creed, color, origin, sexual orientation, gender or marital status, while maintaining our convictions and beliefs as well. All couples legally permitted to marry in Kansas are welcome to use The Barn at Grace Hill. Sharing this with you is the only way we have found that allows everyone to move forward in the most authentic way possible.”
Neither the couple nor Balzer immediately returned requests for comment.
Waggy wrote on Facebook that she “cried all night” after receiving the email. She also asked friends for inclusive venue recommendations.
She didn’t expect that her post would go viral, having now been shared more than 600 times and received more than 700 comments.
“Everybody’s marriage, I think, deserves to be celebrated so if somebody’s going to openly tell you we’re not going to celebrate your marriage, then you need to go somewhere where you’re celebrated and not just tolerated,” Waggy told KAKE-TV, a local ABC affiliate.
In an updated Facebook post Thursday, Waggy shared there is a “happy ending” to her and Robinson’s story. She said she received a message earlier this week from Joy Amore-Bishop — the owner of a soon-to-be opened venue in Derby, Kansas, called Heritage Meadow Estate — who wanted to offer the couple the use of the venue for their wedding, which would have cost $12,000, at no charge.
“We get to keep our wedding date we had planned, & the venue is even more gorgeous than we could have ever dreamed!” Waggy wrote on Facebook Thursday. “But most importantly they support & celebrate ALL love! We are so incredibly grateful for her & her generosity.”
Amore-Bishop told KAKE-TV that she wanted to “overshadow any kind of negativity that they may have felt in the beginning.”
“Honestly it was like my mama bear heart that just wanted to wrap her in a hug and make her know that not everybody feels that way,” she told KAKE.
Waggy said in her post Thursday that as her experience with Robinson received more attention, she realized it wasn’t just about them or how they were treated.
“It was about using our voice to speak up, even when it was scary with the hope to raise awareness of our experience & save as many people as we could from feeling ‘uncelebrated’ in what should be one of the most exciting times of their lives; & I truly hope that’s what happens,” she wrote.
