A bride’s big day came crashing down after she made a big entrance only to realise barely a handful of her guests had shown up.
Planning a wedding can be extremely stressful, and not to mention expensive!
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Even though the day should be about the bride and groom, a lot of the stress can stem from attempting to accommodate guests.
The guest list can quickly become quite big when you have to invite friends of friends and distant relatives, and then everyone has opinions on the food.
But what if you went through all of this stress… and then only a few actually turned up?
Well, for Kalina Mari this was the sad reality.
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In a viral video that’s gained millions of views, Marie shared her heartbreak after only five guests attended her much-anticipated wedding, despite inviting over a hundred people.
The video, posted on TikTok, captures the bride walking into a nearly empty venue with her husband and their son, revealing only three other guests celebrating alongside them.
Kalina explained in the video that she had sent digital invitations to 75 people and mailed physical invitations to 25 others for her masquerade-themed wedding.
“This is our entrance to our Masquerade [sic] ball. The Masquerade ball that I have talked EXCESSIVELY about for the last 10 months,” she wrote in a caption.
“The same ball that I not only digitally invited over 75 people to,” Kalina continued, “but ALSO spent money to send 25 beautiful invitations out to.”
Her shock and disappointment were evident as she exclaimed: “FIVE PEOPLE SHOWED UP!!!!!!! Like, are you kidding me!?!? As you see in the video, we enter the venue. And no one is there.”
The couple had delayed their wedding due to the pandemic and had been together for nine years, engaged for four.
They hoped the wedding would be a celebration of their journey together, but the turnout fell far short of their expectations.
To give guests more time, they even delayed the start of the event by an hour, making their entrance at 2:00PM, only to find the room still largely empty.
Kalina confessed that she had long imagined walking into a room full of friends and family to mark the day.
Instead, she found herself “a woman trying to hold herself together,” struggling to process the absence of expected guests.
In the caption, she admitted her frustration over “wasted food and drinks” and the sight of “empty tables and chairs.”
Despite the disappointment, Kalina and her close circle made the most of the evening.
“Did we still make the most of it?? You bet your SWEET a** we did,” she wrote. “But did this video just take all the good moments and shoot them out of the water for a second, f*** yeah it did.”
Reflecting on the experience, Kalina questioned whether she and her husband had the right people in their lives, noting that many friends had neither congratulated them nor informed them that they wouldn’t be attending.
“I have my man. My baby. And family that shows up when I need them. And for that, I will be thankful,” she wrote.
Days after posting the video, Kalina shared additional context in a follow-up post, answering viewer questions.
She explained that she and her husband had set their October wedding date as early as January and had consistently reminded friends and family. For those not on social media, she mailed 25 physical invitations.
When asked about any explanations received from absent guests, Kalina admitted she hadn’t heard much.
“I haven’t really received a lot of messages explaining why people weren’t there or giving me excuses, and I’m kind of thankful for that,” she said.
“For the most part, we’ve done a lot of deleting and re-evaluating our lives and just spending a lot of time appreciating what we have and what we had.”
