Chicago couple's wedding invitations get lost in the mail weeks before their big day
CHICAGO (CBS) – This isn't a case of a runaway bride, but instead runaway wedding invitations.
One West Loop woman said the U.S. Postal Service lost all of her invites less than two months before her big day. CBS 2's Marissa Perlman has her story on why she now wants the mail carrier to step up.
Lauren Newhouse and her fiancé Michael Shook are counting down until their big day.
"It's in May and getting more excited by the day," Newhouse said.
Their love story was spelled out in ink on custom-made wedding invitations.
"We met in Detroit at this little dive bar," she said.
The couple ceremoniously shipped them off to their friends and family at the afterhours USPS drop box near their home.
"I'm absolutely positive they were all in there," Newhouse said.
But by trusting the blue box, overnight this became an impossible RSVP.
"My fiancé jokes these invitations are absolutely cursed," she said.
Early the next morning, Newhouse, a resident at the University of Illinois at Chicago, started getting messages on social media.
"It was all people who had found our wedding invitations strewn across West Loop," she said.
Others showed up at their front door, all with wet, ragged envelopes in hands.
"Your heart just sinks," Newhouse said.
"I look our behind me and I see all of these blue pieces of paper at the intersection." said Don Gonzalez, one of the couple's neighbors.
Perlman: "Most people would drive by these pieces of paper like it was nothing. What made you stop?"
Gonzalez: "As soon as I saw the stamps on it, I realized they were probably wedding invitations."
Gonzalez too is planning his own wedding. He noticed the love stamp and called on his daughter Quinn to help him track down the bride.
"I know what she's going through a little bit," he said.
It was a reunion of sorts in the West Loop where Gonzalez first found the invites, blocks from that blue box. Other invites were found more than a mile away. How they got here is still a mystery.
"I know wedding invitations don't sound like a big deal, and they're probably aren't, but we did put a lot of time and money into them," Newhouse said.
Newhouse is down thousands of dollars and dealing with a tight deadline, with just a few weeks to go until her wedding. Plus, her personal information is on display on city streets. But Newhouse said there was a silver lining: folks helping her track down her "something blue."
"It doesn't feel good to have your personal information out there, but to know that our neighbors here are so tight knight and so awesome to try to help us through and at least figure out what happened felt good," she said.
Postal inspectors say their mail theft team has been made aware of the incident and is looking into it. Newhouse said a stationer from Michigan reached out and got them replacement invitations at cost.
They'll be sent out on ultra-rush delivery this week.
