Wedding crashers! Newlyweds and over 30 of their guests fall 25 feet through floor at wedding reception
They crashed their own wedding.
A bride and groom spent their wedding night in hospital beds after they and more than 30 of their guests fell 25 feet through the floor of their Italian reception venue.
Video from the former Giaccherino convent in Pistoia, Tuscany, on Jan. 13 showed guests dancing and jumping as music blared in the attic when a huge hole suddenly opened up.
Dozens of guests immediately fell through to the ground below, while other partygoers stared down at them — gasping and screaming in terror.
Among those who fell were the newlyweds, Paolo Mugnaini and his Italian-American bride, Valerie Ybarra, originally from Houston, Texas.
“Suddenly, I found myself in another dimension, in the dark, in the void,” Mugnaini told Corriere della Sera.
“In a moment, I heard bodies falling on me, along with rubble of all kinds, dust, splinters.”
At first, the groom said he was not sure what was happening.
“I had entered a frightening whirlpool and I couldn’t orient myself,” he recounted to the local newspaper.
“Then I found myself in front of my best friend. I called him, but he didn’t answer, he had a big cut on his head, there was a lot of blood. Only then did I begin to understand.
“I started screaming, calling Valerie, my wife. She was unresponsive and she seemed to have disappeared. I feared that she had been buried by the rubble.”
But the two were later pictured holding hands in their hospital beds pushed next to each other, while Mugnaini was getting IV fluids. They were released from the hospital the next day, officials said.
Thirty-seven others at the wedding also received medical treatment, with 28 remaining in the hospital the next day, Tuscany’s local health authority announced.
Two were in intensive care, including a child, though health officials said their conditions were not life-threatening.
Others were being assessed for potential broken bones, and a pregnant woman who fell was being examined by OBGYNs. Both she and her future child are expected to survive, according to Corriere della Sera.
Those left on the scene were left horrified by the unexpected collapse.
“I’m shocked, I was in the room, shouts were heard and this catastrophe happened,” the groom’s father, who was not identified, told Corriero Fiorentino.
“I didn’t see the portion of the floor collapse, I saw the hole. There was panic, we looked for where the people had fallen, after two or three minutes we found them.”
Genny, a waitress at the venue, explained that it was enveloped in dust, making it hard to see the full scale of the disaster.
“We heard screams and desperate people crying,” she told Il Messaggero.
Mugnaini and Ybarra are now suing the venue, as local prosecutors investigate whether it is guilty of causing injury by negligence and failing to complete work necessary to remove the dangers.
The former convent is now closed as police investigate its structural integrity. They were seen examining the wood-paneled room where the party took place, which now features an almost perfect circular hole in the floor.
The wedding was apparently the first time the former convent used the attic for dancing, according to Corriere della Sera.
It had previously used a larger and more secure room, the newspaper reports.
But the owners of the venue told Report Pistoia they do not understand how the collapse could have happened, describing it as a “tragic and unpredictable event.”
They added that they would fully cooperate with any investigation.
