Wedding postponement - extra costs - is this legal?

daston5

We are due to be married in September 2020 and 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 legally charge an extra fee to postpone our wedding?

- Is there any way we can get our money back if worst comes to worse and are forced to cancel?

It all just seems to be extortionate.

This is only the wedding venue at the moment therefore if the other suppliers start demanding other payments it really does leave us in a hole!

any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Dan

Aylesbury_Duck

That doesn't sound at all enforceable.  If they can't fulfil your booking you are entitled to a refund.  How did you pay?  Credit card I hope?

daston5

We have currently paid 50% of the costs and this was all done on credit card yes.
I believe there get out of jail is including the Majeure clause in their contract but again I'm not a legal expert. Would you advise trying to obtain some free legal advice?

unholyangel

Did you actually ask to postpone or cancel the wedding? September is still 5 months away, so a little early to be worrying about it yet. 

davidmcn

daston5 said:

I believe there get out of jail is including the Majeure clause in their contract but again I'm not a legal expert.

It would help if you quote the clause to us.
There's nothing you can actually do anyway at the moment, given that nobody knows September weddings can't still go ahead.

daston5

unholyangel said:

Did you actually ask to postpone or cancel the wedding? September is still 5 months away, so a little early to be worrying about it yet. 

No they have just said IF THEY postpone the wedding (which will be looked at in July) then we will have to pay. 

Yes was just trying to get ahead of the game in case it got nasty, plus we are due to make more payments in July to various suppliers.

daston5

davidmcn said:

daston5 said:

I believe there get out of jail is including the Majeure clause in their contract but again I'm not a legal expert.

It would help if you quote the clause to us.
There's nothing you can actually do anyway at the moment, given that nobody knows September weddings can't still go ahead.

The clause states
"The hotel shall not be responsible for any failure to provide facilities contracted for, in the event of it being prevented from doing so as a result of "Force Majeure", for any cases beyond reasonable control. This would include events outside our reasonable control such as serious damage to the Venue, natural disaster, serious adverse weather conditions, pandemic, epidemic or interruption or failure to utility services such as gas, electric or water."

We were hoping to prepare ourselves with some knowledge on the subject before a definite decision was made. 

bap98189

The force majeur clause is pretty standard and would certainly mean if the lockdown was still going on, and they cancelled the booking and refunded your money, that you couldn't claim any more costs from them. However it does not mean they can suddenly postpone the booking and charge you more money for doing so.

Are these clauses in the contract about postponement? Is there a clause about fees for this? It would be understandable for them to charge a fee if you decide to postpone the date, but not for them to do so.

davidmcn

As above, the force majeure clause doesn't mean they'd be entitled to pocket your money for the venue hire itself, just that you couldn't claim consequential losses.

steampowered

As others have said, that clause says that the hotel will not be liable for damages for failing to provide the venue during lockdown. It doesn't say that the hotel can charge rebooking fees.
I'd be asking for a refund.

daston5

Thank you all for commenting it has been good to get everybody's opinion. It was also a relief to hear that the force majeure clause would still entitle us to a refund, as I was under the impression (from their wording) it meant they could just walk away from the arrangement and blame the pandemic.
I have just searched our contract and there is nothing in there about the venue postponing only if we postpone, so I'm guessing  this is in our favour aswell?!