Wedding Deposit

KingDon

Hi newbie here that needs help  

Myself and my fiancée have booked a wedding for August this year. We have paid a non refundable deposit of £600 then another payment after that of £1000 and balance is due 2 weeks before wedding. 

So today we received a phone call from our wedding coordinator at the hotel, saying she was offering all her couples dates for next year free of charge as this year was not looking good. But she could not say for definite what was happening!

The question is: Are we entitled to a refund if the hotel is closed on the date we have chosen for our wedding and don’t want to choose an alternative date next year ? 

T&Cs only says deposit is non refundable nothing about any other payments. 

Thanks  
Dave 

poppy12345

You won't be the first person to post asking the same question. You may not be entitled to any refund, going by what others have said. Do a search and it should bring up other threads.

Pollycat

And it might be worth reading this MSE article that specifically mentions weddings - you will need to scroll down:

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-help-and-support/?_ga=2.181461539.502291125.1587284438-278771506.1587284438

Note this:

Competition watchdog launches probe into coronavirus refunds

On 30 April, the Competition and Markets Authority launched an investigation into firms that fail to give customers proper refunds for coronavirus-related cancellations, and will be partly focusing on wedding providers.

It's also said it would usually expect customers to be given a full refund if restrictions mean a service can't be provided or accessed, or if a firm cancels without providing the goods or service – so you could use this to argue for a refund if the provider refuses.

KingDon

Great thanks 😊 

P_Quinn

KingDon said:

Hi newbie here that needs help  

Myself and my fiancée have booked a wedding for August this year. We have paid a non refundable deposit of £600 then another payment after that of £1000 and balance is due 2 weeks before wedding. 

So today we received a phone call from our wedding coordinator at the hotel, saying she was offering all her couples dates for next year free of charge as this year was not looking good. But she could not say for definite what was happening!

The question is: Are we entitled to a refund if the hotel is closed on the date we have chosen for our wedding and don’t want to choose an alternative date next year ? 

T&Cs only says deposit is non refundable nothing about any other payments. 

Thanks  
Dave 

The likely hood of you getting all of your money back isn't great, if they can evidence that they have offered you alternate dates etc then they may keep your deposit (if they can evidence what is has been spent on) i.e. admin for the wedding planner etc. as given the circumstances, they will be seen to be being reasonable in their request to move it to another day.


Im going through a similar thing, i expressed i wanted to cancel my wedding back in March (due to get married in July) and the venue asked me to wait a little longer for more updates, i have done and now i've found out they have fired the wedding coordinator, closed down the hotel (wont open until next year) but he is still demanding i pay the final payment, i have refused because i asked to cancel back in March & he asked for more time so he doesn't lose the booking but he is now claiming if i cancel now, under our T&C's he is entitled to 50% of the booking cost anyway as a cancellation charge. (if i cancelled in march, he got £0) P.s i have been emailing for 6 weeks with no response, up until he sent us our final bill. the only number to reach him on was the hotel numbers or the wedding coordinator but given he shut the hotel and sacked the coordinator, we cannot speak to anyone & thus cannot even plan our wedding for if it was to go ahead.

KingDon

Well update today! 

So we rang hotel again to see what could be done in this situation? And they basically said change date or wait it out till August. OK.......we will wait and see and hopefully they will cancel our wedding.

After that we spoke to hotel we rang credit card company and consumer advice who both said pretty much the same thing, 1- If the venue cancel we would be able to claim deposit back  because we aren’t receiving the service we paid for and agreed in contract. And 2- even if wedding goes ahead and the hotel is open but social distancing etc is in place we could claim breach of contract as again we agreed on x amounts of guest for day which is not possible to have. 

So it’s now a waiting game but from watching the news it’s going to be a long process before things eg hotels get back to normal.

thanks again

Dave