Oregon Bride Persuades Judge To Open Shuttered Hotel In Foreclosure To Host Wedding; Now Cries Foul Over "Extorionate" Receivership Bill

In Hood River, Oregon, The Oregonian reports:

• Plenty of brides gnashed teeth, sobbed and cried foul in January when the landmark Columbia Gorge Hotel abruptly closed, keeping their wedding deposits. But just one, Lynne Haaland of Toluca Lake, Calif., fought the distance. She persuaded a judge to order the hotel's court-appointed receiver to allow her wedding ceremony.

• On Saturday, Haaland, 40, tied the knot with Aaron Shepard, 37, at the Hood River hotel, becoming Lynne Shepard. By all accounts the wedding and reception on the spectacular spring day were fabulous, fulfilling her dreams.

• Yet now the Shepards, honeymooning on the Oregon coast, are stunned by the receiver's invoice: $17,938.60, including a $6,650 lawyer's bill and a $2,000 "landscape fee." The interim receiver, Gorge Rentals Property Management Inc., defends the charges as appropriate. "I'm getting slightly extorted," Lynne Shepard said. "They know I wanted the place so bad."

For more, see Fighting bride KO'd by bill (if link expires, try here).