Newport gas outage impacts couple’s wedding

January 24, 2019 11:43 pm

NEWPORT, R.I. (WLNE) — Andrew Jarbeau and his fiance Kim Morin had been busy planning their Newport wedding ever since they got engaged a year ago.

“Her dream was always to have an elegant, classy wedding, smaller scale, little more extravagant,” said Jarbeau.

The couple booked 75 guests and 22 rooms at the Hotel Viking for this weekend. All was going according to plan until Tuesday–just four days before their big day. They got an email that the Viking wouldn’t be able to host them. Turns out the historic hotel is among the 7,000 National Grid customers which lost natural gas service.

“They were without heat, and they certainly couldn’t operate a kitchen without gas,” said Jarbeau.

The groom says postponing the wedding at the eleventh hour would have been a disaster.

“We have family coming in from Pennsylvania, coming up from Florida. It would have been very disappointing to have to postpone or cancel,” said Jarbeau.

Then, a glimmer of hope from across Green End Pond. The sales team at the Viking put in a call to the folks at the Atlantic Resort in Middletown.

“They asked us if our space was available,” said Kirby Arsenault, Director of Sales at the Atlantic.

Turns out the Atlantic didn’t have a wedding booked for this weekend, so they got to work, reserving rooms for all the guests at nearby properties–and now, the wedding is on again.

“They loved it, and we were able to fulfill their wishes with their wedding venue,” said Arsenault. “It’s great to make the bride and groom’s day the perfect day they ever wished for, even though the circumstances are unfortunate.”

So despite a gas outage that’s made many miserable, Jarbeau and Morin will be every bit as happy to be saying “I do” on time, even if it is a couple miles away.

“Listen, we’re going to have a wedding, we’re going to have a great time, and that’s the most important,” said Jarbeau. “Certainly a blessing.”