wedding day disasters... HELP!!

tidytink

The hotel we booked to get married at has lied form day one, we so badly wanted to get married outside and the hotels we viewed all had beautiful gardens etc, but we needed to be happy with the room if it happened to be bad weather! Ok so we finally found one that we fell in love with, it had been taken over by a company after the previous owners went into liquidation etc, we viewed it at the final stages of re decoration, literally the decorators were packing things up as we were shown around, we asked to see the place we could have the ceremony outside and they said they were due to meet with an interior designer in the week to draw plans etc but showed us where it would be built. We had a year til our wedding so didnt think there would be any issues as were also told they were really making sure the whole hotel was completed in time for wedding season.
So we came away, discussed it and a week later put a £800 deposit to secure our date.
Ok so moving on a few weeks, we met with the registrar who said she'd seen the plans for the 'gazebo' and it looks stunning etc.
Emailed the hotel to discuss food etc and asked about 'gazebo' in a few emails. One of the emails i received stated that the chairman had given confirmation the 'gazebo' would be built in time for our wedding.
Ok moving on to about 6/7 weeks prior to wedding we receive another email stating they been having problems with planning so 'gazebo' wont be built in time so as a 'good will' we can have our drinks package for free.
Ok now if that had been genuine, i would of accepted the offer.
I went to the local planning office and checked............No planning application submitted....... at all!
They knew we were relying on the 'gazebo' for our wedding.
Ive tried questioning them just to be lied further to and finally got the response of 'Not to pursue the planning query any further'
Now i dont want to push it too far as we only have a few weeks to go and they know we wont find anywhere at such a late date!
What can we do legally?
Sorry its long but thats not even half of it!
thanks

SugarSpun

Whereabouts are you?

If you ring around you may find some places have availability and may do you a deal given the late notice and your sob story.

Also, if you have wedding insurance then it might be an idea to contact them and see where you stand, if not then find a solicitor that does a free half-hour.

becs

I will say in defence of the hotel that they may well have had discussions with planners that would not be public record. Only a formal application has to be available to the public. Anything prior to this woud be confidential, so they may not in fact be lying to you at all.
I would say you can't prove conclusively either way and the fact they contacted you to advise of the problem and offer compensation woud lead me to suspect that they are not liars and have incurred the problems they have advised you of.
I woud work with them to see what they can do with the outside space to a it specal without having the gazebo.

tidytink

thanks for the advice guys, just totally gutted as so much has gone wrong and being promised something as simple as a garden wedding really meant the world to us. But I guess big hotels dont care too much aslong as they take your money.