Couple weds at charity that brought them together, packs meals for hungry kids after exchanging vows

A couple tying the knot in Minnesota decided to forgo a fancy reception hall and even skip their first dance, instead opting to spend their New Year’s Eve nuptials packing meals for hungry kids at the charity that brought them together — and their 70 guests followed suit.

Chara Juneau and Adam Claude have spent many date nights and even Valentine’s Day at their favorite charity organization, Feed My Starving Children in Cοοn Rapids, Minn., Claude told Yahoo Lifestyle. So it was very fitting that their wedding would take place there too — but surprisingly, the idea didn’t occur to them until Judy Watke, the organization’s director of development and a close friend of the couple, suggested it in passing.

“We thought, ‘Wait a second, that’s not a bad idea,'” Claude said, noting that Watke knew an engagement was looming. “I had the ring already,” he said. Though Claude and Juneau were in no hurry, the stars just started to align. First, Claude bid and — to his surprise — easily won a trip to the Virgin Islands at a charity auction in November. “We thought, ‘This would make a great honeymoon,’ but the trip was for early January, so we’d have to push it back a few months to make it a honeymoon.”

That’s when Juneau suggested the two just head to the courthouse for a ‘shotgun wedding’ and leave the honeymoon trip as is. The spontaneous planning quickly led back to the proposal of a wedding at Feed My Starving Children’s headquarters — and eventually, the scenario made too much sense for the pair to pass up. “We asked [Watke], ‘Were you serious when you said we could have our wedding there?’ and she said, ‘Absolutely, this would be amazing. It’d be you!'”

Claude and Juneau then ran the idea by their friends and family to make sure it wasn’t “ridiculous,” he joked, and “they said it would be awesome, and they’re on board.” Claude told Yahoo Lifestyle the philanthropic wedding meshed with the couple’s financial sensibilities, too. “The whole thing cost very little money,” he said. “I didn’t want to start our lives in debt. It was a great way to generate money — rather than spending thousands of dollars, we could raise thousands of dollars.”

And that’s how the wedding went from low-key affair to full-blown charity event. Claude set up a wedding fundraiser called ‘Let’s Feed Kids,’ where he set a lofty goal of $1,000,000 — and the couple has already raised more than $100,000 and counting. But the day itself was where the action happened. After exchanging vows in front of their guests, the couple pulled on hairnets and started sealing and packing meals that are scheduled to be delivered to starving children in Sierra Leone.

Their guests joined in, and together, the entire party prepared 22,000 meals, which will feed 60 kids for a year. The guests even took time out to playfully form a “ladle arch” for the newlyweds to pass through — a venue-appropriate tweak on tradition.

Like many love stories, Claude and Juneau’s marriage almost never happened. Claude, an IT consultant, had been living in Minnesota, happily organizing meal-packing events at Feed My Starving Children when Juneau, a wedding photographer, moved there from Seattle to be closer to her family in 2017. Twice a year, he’d launch a big event with more than 150 volunteers at the Cοοn Rapids location where the pair would eventually wed. Claude told Yahoo Lifestyle that Juneau was invited by their mutual friend on Facebook to more than one meal-packing event, but continued to decline because she wanted to be available for her sister, who was pregnant. “She told me to keep inviting her, though,” Claude said.

But fate intervened, and the pair finally met while attending the same church. “I didn’t know we went to same church,” Claude said, but he was glad he recognized her from her Facebook photos. “From there we started hanging out,” he said, noting that the Feed My Starving Children charity may not have been where they met, “but it’s how we met.”

Claude told Yahoo Lifestyle that the whole point of the wedding was for the couple to remain low-key while putting the focus others in need — but clearly that backfired, he joked. That said, he’s happy to now be receiving funds from anonymous donors who were touched by the wedding story. “FMSC uses donations given by people (like you) to fund meal ingredients, where volunteers (like me) hand-pack meals,” he wrote on the fundraising page. “The meals are delivered to areas that are in desperate need of food.”

For Claude and Juneau, the entire series of events has been a whirlwind. “Within 24 hours we accepted an offer on a house and got married,” he said, noting that the couple was closing on their new house on Wednesday, and would be jetting off on their honeymoon not long after. No doubt the couple will be visiting their charity stomping grounds soon after returning to real life — but for now, suffice to say they’ve earned their time in the sun.

Read more from Yahoo Lifestyle:

• Bride surprises groom by announcing pregnancy at wedding reception in front of guests

• Bride kicks guests out of her wedding for not following her one rule

• Woman pens letter describing her future spouse 3 years before she meets him

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