Our venue will not move to next year

tomL92

Hello,
First time posting so hope I am putting this in the right place! 
Looking to get advice on how best to approach our wedding venue. We are due to be married in July this year. We booked a wedding for 80 guests in the day and 150 in the evening. As it is looking incresasingly unlikely we will be able to have that this year we emailed our venue and asked them if we can move to next year. The response was we can move to later this year at the same cost but anything next year would cost a further £2,000. Obviously we paid a premium for a summer wedding and it is likely anything this year will still see social distancing enforced we were not keen for this. I queried the charge and I was told it was due to the venue having to pay the VAT again on what we had already paid due to the new financial year. Now I am no accountant but this didn't sound right so after checking with an accountant this was not the case. Giving them the benefit of the doubt I went back and suggested they may have been misguided on their advice on this. They responded now ignoring anything to do with VAT with how venues are struggling and everyone needs to adapt and they had to charge the £2,000. I have pushed back a couple more times on this, I was even told just to claim the extra money on insurance and that technically they could probably have a wedding service in July this year with restrictions so they would be fulfilling their contract so take it or lose the £10k we have already paid. So my very long winded question is do we have any legal right to a refund? And do you think we should be flexible to the venue and take the December wedding? Many thanks, Tom 

gettingtheresometime

I think they would take the attitude that if you cancelled the wedding even if they could hold the ceremony with a greatly reduced numbers, then it that was up to you & no refund would be due.

the trouble with moving it to 2021, is that you've got not only the couples from 2020 who are looking to rearrange but also couples who would in any event would be getting married in 2021 so the law of supply & demand kicks in. It would be interesting to know how much they'd charge a couple who was enquiring about making a completely new booking. 

as for a December wedding, well that's only a decision you & your partner can make ...though a winter wedding could be romantic with all fairy lights in the trees etc. 

tomL92

Thanks for taking the time to respond. The price difference between this year and next is £500 plus an increase in accommodation. We offered to pay this and accepted us and the guests may pay for accommodation as well as we appreciated the venue is thinking exactly as you said bit sadly they didn't see that as a fair compromise. The December wedding could be option but they would not consider refunding the considerable difference between their winter and summer weddings so we would be paying far more than normal. Sadly think you may be right and we are either losing a lot of money or having an expensive wedding for not many guests at the moment!