Newlyweds Sue for $300K After Sprinkler Mishap
By JENNIFER MILLMAN
Updated 4:18 PM EST, Mon, Jan 26, 2009
A new husband and wife are suing the Staten Island hotel where they had their wedding ceremony because it rained on their big day. Well, it didn’t exactly rain – it sprinkled.
Svetlana Orishchenko and her hubby, Yuriy, had an outdoor ceremony last summer at the Hilton Garden Inn. Everything started out great, but then the sprinkler system went off, wetting all the wedding guests and causing chaos, according to the Daily News.
Now the Brooklyn couple is suing the hotel for $300,000 – 15 times the amount they paid for the wedding. Why so much? Svetlana wants them to pay up for ruining her big day.
"I was the princess and this was everything I could have wanted," bride Svetlana told the Daily News. "We made sure of everything, I even asked them if there were generators in case the power went out. But the sprinklers?"
The groom told the paper he was halfway down the aisle when the sprinklers turned on. He watched the guests on the side where the water was coming down flee to the other side of the aisle. Then those sets of sprinklers went on as well – a total disaster.
It took about 15 to 20 minutes before the water was shut off and the wedding ceremony continued as planned. Hotel owner Richard Nicotra tried to pay the couple $5,000 for the inconvenience and had his employees run out there with towel to dry off the frazzled guests, but Svetlana said that wasn’t good enough for ruining the dream she’d since she was “a little girl.”
Nicotra attributes the couple’s lawsuit to more than a dream day gone array, however.
“This is blackmail,” he told the Daily News. “They just want a free wedding. They want to take us to the cleaners."
First Published: Jan 8, 2009 11:15 AM EST
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