© 2026 ABC News

The couple confirmed their new venue, a country club in Novato, just outside San Francisco, the night before the wedding.

\"PHOTO:
Courtesy William Grenis
PHOTO: The Novato, Calif., wedding venue of Rick Grenis and Bonnie Frazier is shown here as wildfires burn close by, Oct. 13, 2017.
>

“We took a year or more to plan this and then we basically planned an entire new wedding in 48 hours,” Rick Grenis said. “It was something that we reminded ourselves throughout the week, that it’s not about the specific details that we had been planning but the fact that we’re getting married and that people are still coming to celebrate us.”

The smoke from the fires, however, had spread so far that Hanson brought masks for Frazier, Grenis and their guests to wear at the outdoor wedding to protect themselves from smoke.

\"PHOTO:
Courtesy William Grenis
PHOTO: Rick Grenis, 29, and Bonnie Frazier, 27, pose as if kissing through face masks at their wedding in Novato, Calif., Oct. 13, 2017.
>
\"PHOTO:
Courtesy William Grenis
PHOTO: Rick Grenis and Bonnie Frazier pose with their wedding guests in face masks at their Oct. 13, 2017 wedding in Novato, Calif.
>

The bride and groom cancelled their planned rentals of houses for nearly 30 out-of-state guests in Healdsburg so that the homes could be used instead to house evacuees.

They also asked their wedding guests to make donations to fire victims in lieu of wedding gifts. They are making their own donation to help those affected by the fires, and they hope to return one day to their planned wedding destination.

“We keep joking that for our 10-year anniversary we can go back and follow the itinerary that we had planned,” Frazier said. \"We had a whole wine country weekend.\"

'It was just surreal.'

The fast-moving fires this month caught some wedding-goers by surprise.

Wendy Ross, of Lawrenceville, Georgia, was watching groomsmen give toasts at the Oct. 8 wedding of her son, Sam Ross, to Rachel Lieberstein in the Napa Valley area when wind began to pick up and the sky turned red.

\"It was a wonderful wedding, everything went perfectly and then the wind started really picking up,\" Ross told ABC News. \"As it started getting dark you could notice a little bit of a glow.\"

\"PHOTO:
gideonphoto.com
PHOTO: Sam Ross and Rachel Lieberstein celebrated their marriage with a kiss before evacuating their wedding reception ahead of the Atlas fire on Oct. 8.
>

The ceremony and reception took place at a private home overlooking vineyards in the path of the Atlas fire, which struck Napa and Solano counties, and Wendy Ross said that as the DJ began playing music, \"bright red flames\" were shooting in the sky.

\"I noticed [the flames] about 9:50 that evening and by 10:45, we were gone,\" she said of the 120 guests who evacuated. \"It was very, very frightening.\"

\"PHOTO:
gideonphoto.com
PHOTO: Sam Ross's and Rachel Lieberstein's wedding guests photograph the fast-moving Atlas fire before evacuating their wedding reception.
>

Sam Ross and Lieberstein, now on their honeymoon now in New Zealand, plan to help rebuild their beloved Napa community as soon as they return home.

\"We expect to fully immerse ourselves in the rebuilding process when we return next weekend,\" Lieberstein told ABC News by email. \"We have a lot of friends and family in Napa who have already started brainstorming with us on how we can help our community directly.\"

She added, \"We want to help as quickly and efficiently as possible.\"

ABC News' Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

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