advice on a cancelled wedding please

mrlapes

hi,

my sister in law, tried to do the right thing and pay upfront for alot of her wedding.

cakes, favours, make up, stationary there were a few more.

unfort. the wedding got called off with about 2 months notice and as she tried to reclaim the money, they all said she would not get any refund.

unless a contract stipulated no refund (ive havent managed to view all of them, there wasn't a contract with some), where does she stand? I feel like they are massively taking advantage.

thanks in advance.

Aylesbury_Duck

It depends what the terms and conditions were for the various contracts she entered into. Each of those businesses would have to justify their outlay to date (perhaps they've done some work already on stationery, for example) if she wanted to take them to court and of course, they may have turned down other work because they thought they were booked. I don't see that they're necessarily taking advantage, they took the bookings with reasonable expectations the wedding would go ahead, as nearly all do. She's the one that's messed them around, albeit for what might be a very good reason, but it's still messing businesses around.

She'll have to put some work into asking them for her money back and for each one that refuses, she'll have to decide whether she wants to pursue it or not. Each one will require a separate small claims process if she goes that far.

tehone

Two months is quite short notice for a wedding so its unlikely that a wedding supplier is going to get another booking in that time to make up for the loss. Might be worth asking some of them if there is something else they can provide, e.g cake - could this be a really nice birthday cake for someone, photographer, maybe a nice portrait session on the day instead

Did your SIL have wedding insurance and have you checked to see what that might cover?

unholyangel

The position is that once agreed, a contract is legally binding on both parties and failure to fulfil their obligations makes them liable for losses incurred by the other party. The other party are not entitled to profit from the breach so should make allowances for savings, taking reasonable steps to mitigate their loss and not take unreasonable steps to increase them. So as a few examples, the band/dj could save on travelling costs, the venue or caterer could perhaps save on staffing if they're on a zero hour contract or any of them could rebook at short notice (although if they had to do at a lower price, she would be liable for the difference) etc.

davidmcn

Still_Dave wrote: »

Or, as above, take the cake, throw a party at the booked venue, have some nice family photos done etc.

Yes, if nobody's offering even partial refunds then they're contractually required to provide what she's paying for, so she might as well take advantage of it. But as above, I would expect she ought to be entitled to some money back if the suppliers don't need to actually bake a cake, use make up, travel to the venue, etc.

bris

unholyangel wrote: »

The position is that once agreed, a contract is legally binding on both parties and failure to fulfil their obligations makes them liable for losses incurred by the other party. The other party are not entitled to profit from the breach so should make allowances for savings, taking reasonable steps to mitigate their loss and not take unreasonable steps to increase them. So as a few examples, the band/dj could save on travelling costs, the venue or caterer could perhaps save on staffing if they're on a zero hour contract or any of them could rebook at short notice (although if they had to do at a lower price, she would be liable for the difference) etc.

This is correct, however just some problems that generally come up when mitigating losses.


For instance, the band, they will have a separate contract with the venue so they will still need paying, same with staff, caterers etc like the cake, theres still a contract with the baker. (who would all need to mitigate losses) so it can be difficult for the venue to mitigate those losses.


It's not that they don't still need to try but it really all depends on whats been paid to date V the venues profit for that date. The OP's loss will still be high but again depending on whats been paid it may be worth letting a court sort it out.

mrlapes

thanks for the advice everybody