Wedding Cancellation / Coronavirus

darrenpw1982

Morning, please can I have some help and advice on the following. Our wedding is due to take place on the 17th May 2020 however we have now received a email from the venue giving us 3 options. 1 - continue as planned and run the risk of the wedding being cancelled via the government or me or my fiancé become ill which stops the wedding. If we choose this and the wedding is cancelled they have said Nothing is refundable. 2 - They have offered a free of charge movement to later part of the year either September or October 2020 but again cannot guarantee this due to the country’s current situation and again all payments made are non refundable. Or option 3 (which we would like) move the wedding to 2021 but if we choose this option they require a further 50% deposit of the initial venue hire in our case it’s £4900 so £2450 and they want that paid now ! Please can someone give us so help or advice as we are at a loss and end of the day moving to next year is the best option all round but surely they cannot demand a further / additional 50% of the venue hire cost and request immediate payment ? This is a very worrying and concerning time for us all right now and we never imagined we would have to be dealing with anything like this. We have even considered cutting our losses and cancelling the whole thing altogether due to current climate and the situation we are in how could we even begin to think we would enjoy our wedding day with 
family and friends with all this looming over us ... 

please can someone help us, happy to forward any contract details or recent emails we have received if need be. 

Thank you in advance guys. 

Regards Darren & Samantha 

LouD9876

I'm really interested in seeing your replies! I'm meant to be getting married on 21st May and due to pay final balance to venue today! They've not offered any options to move yet but I know unofficially through knowing someone who knows the family who owns the place they are offering a wedding deferal on a 1st come 1st serve basis, but not making it common knowledge as they're limited on spaces, which I think is a pretty poor approach from the venue. Does anyone know where I stand if I stick with original date, day guests 53 with additional 15 for evening, and the government or venue cancel it, do I loose everything or am I entitled to moving it anyway? I don't have wedding insurance! 

MikePreedy

Hi Both

My daughter’s wedding is on May 24th and with everything happening regarding the Coronavirus and mass gatherings we assumed the wedding was off.
Phew we thought glad we took out wedding insurance at the time.
Having made tentative enquires below this is the response we got from the insurance company and it is supposed to cover for infectious diseases so we thought there wouldn't be an issue!
Wasn’t sure whether I was able to post the name of the company so haven’t for now but the whole thing is a joke why bother taking out insurance?
I understand that anyone taking out insurance now would not be covered but this was taken out over a year ago.
So we are going through what you both are.
The venue has said to discuss it nearer the time, as it is a way off (which it isn't)  but as you say can we leave it up to guests to decide if they want to come?
If the venue make the decision to still be open, then it looks like we will either have to turn up or otherwise lose the money.
If they make the decision to close, then i guess they have to give us an alternative date?
So i am another interested party to see everyone's replies
Regards
Mike

Thank you for your email.

I can confirm that xxxx does not cover any

claim as a result of any notifiable disease. A notifiable

disease is any disease that is required by law to be

reported to government authorities. As COVID-19

(Coronavirus) has officially been registered as a notifiable

disease in the UK, there is no cover if your wedding were to

be cancelled or rearranged due to this.

For more information please refer to the General Exclusion

section of your Policy Wording.

I appreciate that you may be disappointed by this, however

our policies do still provide many other areas of cover, you

can find these on the policy schedule page of your policy

documents.

Kind regards,

daston5

Hi there

We are due to be married in September 2020, hopefully you may be able to provide guidance on the below.

We have recently inquired with the venue what their current plans are and they have advised they are NOT CANCELLING any event but are postponing them instead. There wording was:

Just to explain to you for financial plans – no wedding will be cancelled – we will always postpone however in order to do this we do have to charge a £500 fee for moving later this year or £1,000 to move to next year but fingers crossed it doesn’t come to that. The force Majeure clause is in the final paragraph of the contract however we are choosing not to enforce this clause and offer a solution.

 

My question is:

 – can they charge an extra fee to postpone our wedding?

-  Is there any way we can get our money back if worst comes to worse or are we tied in and be forced to pay the extra?

It all just seems to be EXTORTION!!!!

Thanks

D