On Jan. 7, three days before they were to celebrate their wedding in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles, Kendyl Mara Klein and Benjamin Peter DiGiulio received a text alert.

“It said there was a fire in the Palisades and to evacuate now,” Ms. Klein said. “I said to Ben, ‘That’s where our venue is.’ We were watching and wondering, ‘How big is this fire going to get?’” They went to bed hopeful things might be better by morning.

Instead, they were far worse.

They turned on the news to see a reporter in front of their venue, the Bel-Air Bay Club. It remains standing, but the venue was unable to host their celebration on Jan. 10. “They said we either had to change the date or get a full refund,” Ms. Klein said. “We got a full refund the same day.”

The couple, who live in New Jersey, needed to find a new venue in the midst of this growing tragedy, knowing still how fortunate they were. Rescheduling was not an option, they said. Ms. Klein’s two older sisters and a high school friend swooped in to help.

The women called 15 venues in the Los Angeles area all of which were open to assisting them. Then they had one last idea. Should they call the Ritz just for fun,PHL63 someone asked in the group text. “It wasn’t on our original list because of cost,” Ms. Klein said.

When they called the Ritz-Carlton, Marina del Rey, Jessica Lange, a senior sales manager, asked, “‘What was your refund?’” Ms. Klein said. When she told them, Ms. Lange said, “That’s all you’ll pay.”

Among national universities, Princeton was ranked No. 1 again, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. Stanford, which tied for third last year, fell to No. 4. U.S. News again judged Williams College the best among national liberal arts colleges. Spelman College was declared the country’s top historically Black institution.

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