COUPLE CANCELS WEDDING, DONATES TO NEEDY

When the pandemic upended their wedding plans, Emily Bugg and Billy Lewis tied the knot at Chicago’s City Hall last month instead.

But there was still one piece of unfinished business: What to do about their $500 nonrefundable catering deposit? The newlyweds decided to turn it into 200 Thanksgiving dinners for people with severe mental illness.

“This just seemed like a good way to make the best of a bad situation,” said Bugg, 33, an outreach worker at Thresholds, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions.

In the week leading up to Thanksgiving, dozens of Thresholds clients received a boxed dinner of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans and other fixings from Big Delicious Planet, a high-end Chicago-based caterer.

Bugg and Lewis, 34, got engaged in July 2019 and began planning their wedding. They had booked a hip Chicago event space, a fun DJ and a photographer. Bugg purchased her gown, a slip crepe dress with spaghetti straps, and their guest list topped 150 people.

But as the pandemic stretched on, they went to Plan B, first scaling down their guest list to 50. Then, Plan C: changing dates. And finally Plan D: canceling altogether and heading to City Hall on Oct. 1.

The couple, who met on the online dating app Bumble in 2017, decided they’d rather go ahead and get married than wait for a seemingly never-ending pandemic to subside.

As for the nonrefundable deposits and purchases, the newlyweds chalked them up to the pandemic. The bridal gown — still in its garment bag and hanging in the closet — was a lost cause. So was the check that went to the DJ. The venue, Salvage One, a 60,000square-foot warehouse, agreed to put the couple’s deposit toward a future event for the Epilepsy Foundation, a cause Bugg has a connection to. The photographer, Sophie Cazottes, offered to document the nuptials at City Hall.

But there was still the thorny issue of the $500 catering deposit.

Bugg hatched a plan: Have the wedding banquet morph into Thanksgiving for clients at Thresholds, where she has worked for nine years.

Bugg brought the Thanksgiving proposal to Heidi Moorman Coudal, owner of Big Delicious Planet, who instantly embraced the idea. So did Mark Ishaug, CEO of Thresholds, which serves about 8,000 clients with mental health problems in Chicago.

The holidays are already tough on people with mental illnesses and substance use problems, and the pandemic and associated isolation have only exacerbated both, he said.