Wedding venue crisis

crackerbread

hello all, i hope you can help us,

we have booked our wedding venue in october 2010 and paid the required deposit,

we were originally meant to be having our wedding ceremony in a room upstairs and then moving downstairs into a lovely large room with a high ceiling, glass chandaliers, and space for easily 130 people,

we were told when we booked that the hotel is due for renovation and all the rooms are to be repainted etc etc,
we recieved a phone call yesterday from the hotels new manager asking us to come down urgently,

so we did, we arrived to be told he was the bearer of bad news, apparently he had recieved clearance from the planning department to change the wedding reception room into a cafe bar and reasturant, he then said that means the wedding and reception would be held upstairs,

we went upstairs to see the room and was heartbroken, we have 50 day guests which would fit just, and then 90 night guests which just wont fit into the room, its a conference room with strip lighting, ceiling tiles, and just generally awful, its approx a 3rd of the size of downstairs,

the outcome of this is 2 options in his eyes, we take the room and he will possibly look at reducing the price, or we take and deposit and find somewhere else,

my question is, we think we will have to find somewhere else yet feel they should offer some form of compensation for the hassle this has called,we have written invites, bought the dresses and flowers etc all to tie in with the original rooms color scheme,

do we have a leg to stand to stand on

many thanks,

George_Michael

Do you have any wedding insurance in place?
If so, they should hopefully pay out for the changes.

If not, I would have thought that you would have had a good case for claiming compensation for your losses, although you may have to take legal action to get anything.

Equaliser123

If the arrangements are so bad, then you can treat the contract as at an end. Can you get another, broadly equivalent, venue? If so, you would be entitled to claim any additional costs which are incurred as a result of the breach by the original place.

Did you pay by credit card at all?

pmduk

I feel the hotel should have taken the cost of compensation into account before deciding to convert the room that they have already reserved for you. What do their terms and conditions state about cancellation?