Our wedding and Coronavirus - any advice very much appreciated

lavenderhouse

Hi everyone, 
I appreciate there are a lot of people in a similar position but I am at a loss of what to do next and would appreciate any help / opinions. 
Our wedding was due to take place in July and we have decided to move it to next year. However, the venue are only offering us the option of a Monday which is obviously not comparable to the weekend wedding we had booked. They have Sunday dates available but they are not willing to move us to one of those in case they can sell it to a new couple. Our only option is to remain on a waiting list for a Sunday and if it is still available 11 months before the date, then we can have it. That means waiting for another 9 weeks in the hope no-one else takes that date. This means we can't re-book our registrar or give any of our suppliers the new date, hence we will likely lose our deposits.
It's a really horrible position to be in, especially since we have no choice but to postpone our wedding. My husband to be is also a doctor in intensive care looking after the COVID-19 patients and I'm not sure he can deal with this additional worry.
Thank you in advance to anyone who has any good advice or guidance! 

Ruffle01

I am in the same situation as you, I have been looking into my consumer rights set out by the 'consumer rights act 2015'. I have already posted on this forum, problem is all our issues are fragmented in different forum posts. 

I believe there is a lot of information provided by the consumer rights act that wedding suppliers aren't currently respecting.

Today the Competition and markets authority have announced new guidance and are investigating wedding companies.
This is actually a post from Martin Lewis's facebook page,

"New guidance to firms from the Competitions and Markt's Authority. Full refunds should apply to consumer contacts where

- no goods/service provided
- firm can't provide service due to lockdown
- Cust can't access service due to lockdown

It'll first investigate weddings & events, travel accommodation, nurseries with a view to enforcement."

You can find more information about this on the bbc news business website and the government websites. (I'm not currently allowed to post links)

I do hope this helps you. 
I could elaborate with my own thoughts but I do not want to mislead you as I am also only a worried consumer and not an expert in this at all. 

lavenderhouse

Hi Ruffle01, 
Thank you so much for coming back - hopefully we will receive some more guidance in the comings days and I will check out Martin's post and the BBC and government sites in the meantime.
The venue are not giving priority to current customers who have been affected and I believe that is the issue.

Ruffle01

Yes, it is tough. I guess they have no obligation to give priority to existing customers, although this could now change with todays announcement.

However they might have an obligation to offer a similar service, i.e. offering a saturday date for you. I can see an argument to be made that a Monday wedding date is not comparable to a Saturday, and this can (in my opinion) be reasonably justifiable by pointing to the the venues own varying costs to provide weddings on these days. For example, you wouldn't return a high end TV (the saturday) and expect to recieve a low end TV (the monday) as compensation. This could be deemed unfair. 

We have a similar discussion to be had with our suppliers, but they have also increased there rates for 2021 weddings even further from there originally stated 2021 prices. Which could get tricky. 

I believe we as consumers have been put at a pretty clear and unfair disadvantage when negotiating with our suppliers due the financial committment, and potential loss of, that we have already committed to. I really do hope the announcement today makes these companies think about what they are doing.

Again, I am no expert. But I think even the experts could find it hard to understand and interpret this situation.