Wedding deposit

RLH33

Why don't you get a free half hour meeting with a solicitor? Even if you had to pay for a letter to be sent to the venue then it may be worth it considering the amount of money they want off you at the moment.

kr15snw

Jesus, whats your contract say?

We've paid £500 and if we cancel more than 1 month we just don't get that back! After 1 month it goes to 50% and then after 1 week it's 75%.

Seems like a MAD contract!

Crobbo

RLH33 wrote: »

Why don't you get a free half hour meeting with a solicitor? Even if you had to pay for a letter to be sent to the venue then it may be worth it considering the amount of money they want off you at the moment.

Many thanks RLH33. We did this and established that the hotel's contract looks watertight; however the solicitor agreed that, as our final order is not yet due with the hotel, it's worth minimising our loss by reducing our requirements to the absolute minimum (eg fewer guests, cheaper menu, no extras) before raising the question of cancellation with the hotel.

We're also working on the possibility of handing over the booking, totally paid-for in effect, to a charity to run whatever event they might choose for fund-raising purposes. The solicitor suggests finding a charity via the local newspaper so as to "encourage" the hotel to be co-operative in order to avoid any possibility of bad publicity...

Will keep you posted. Thanks for everyone's advice so far - much appreciated.

*Louise*

Any update on this - how are you getting on?? xx

Crobbo

Thanks *Louise*, we've settled everything with the hotel now. First we reduced our order to the absolute minimum, which brought the potential £7,000 penalty charge down to below £5,500 (of which we'd already paid £1,000 - hence a bit under £4,500 to pay).

The hotel were very sceptical, pointing out that one glass of wine per person wouldn't be viable on the day (I guess they were thinking of what waiters would say to guests wanting more) but they also twigged that it might be a strategy to minimise costs ahead of cancellation, and so asked us directly.

We said, regrettably, that was the case and, after a bit of negotiation, offered them £4,000 straightaway, rather than wait till the full payment became due several weeks later. They accepted.

The sad thing was that the hotel banjaxed our idea of giving the paid-for booking to charity, to raise funds. The hotel said they'd agree as long as either we or the charity paid another £1,500 to make the event viable for them.

We thought if we were going to fork out more we'd sooner give it to charity direct, and the chances of a charity being able to profit on top of paying out £1,500 themselves seemed slim, with only a few weeks to raise interest in an event. So we said no thanks and walked away.

Later, telling our solicitor the outcome, she said why pour good money after bad...

Not altogether a success story - not our family's finest hour - but it could have been so much worse!

iolanthe07

Can't you insure against this sort of thing happening?

poet123

I dont understand why the hotel could not offer to host a charity function on £5000. Obviously, the numbers woul dneed to be scaled back to allow them a profit margin but it should have been possible for, say, the local hospice fundraising team to get something together with minimal notice. They will now resell the venue and make double the profit.

Oh well, it is no longer your problem, and I expect you have other issues to concern you, but it was a lovely thought and some charity would have been thrilled if your gesture been acceptable to the hotel.

Crobbo

poet123 wrote: »

I dont understand why the hotel could not offer to host a charity function on £5000.

You're absolutely right in our view, poet123. It's a great shame the hotel couldn't recognise the positive publicity to be had from helping us turn a bad situation into a good one for the benefit of a local charity.

Sadly, a lot of organisations seem to see only the potential for bad publicity, and shy away from the local newspaper/radio etc. I guess that fear isn't something that's going to go away overnight...

Thanks again to everyone for their posts on this - always thought-provoking.

floss2

iolanthe07 wrote: »

Can't you insure against this sort of thing happening?

Yes of course you can, but not everybody thinks about buying wedding insurance and there is no guarantee that your reason for cancellation would be covered by insurance, for instance if you changed your mind about the venue or even about getting married.

Dinah93

All wedding insurances I have seen don't cover against this kind of thing happening, they more cover you if the hotel went bankrupt and closed, or burnt down, basically issues which the insurer sees as out of your control.