Wedding Blues
BoboJ81
Forumite 3 Posts
A little help with our wedding fiasco if you don't mind.
We booked our wedding back in the halcyon days of 2019 for 08/08/2020, putting down an £800 deposit for the reception and another amount for the church and caterers. As the pandemic unfolded, like many, we started haemorrhaging money left, right and centre. We soon had a communication from our church to say that no services could be held before October 2020. On contacting the wedding venue and requesting to cancel, we were told we would only get a refund if they were to cancel, not us. They argued we could technically still hold the wedding reception as they were only limited to 15 people at that stage (late March/early April). They soon came to the conclusion that weddings couldn't continue and offered us a postponement until 2021. We again asked to cancel and get a refund but were told we would not only lose the deposit but pay a cancellation fee too,so we agreed to reschedule for August 2021.
Since then, our finances have deteriorated even further, to the point whereby we can't fund our original wedding plans. I recently came across the government guidance on wedding refunds and saw this as a ray of hope. Having read around a bit, it seems now that even with this guidance, nobody is getting refunds, even with the help of a solicitor.
I suppose what I want to know is:
a) do we have any grounds to request a refund?
b) what is the best way to go about it?
C) can we request refunds from the church and caterer too?
I've seen somewhere that the Financial Ombudsman can make decisions, if your initial plea falls on deaf ears. Is this a good way to go?
Any help/guidance with this would be amazing.
We booked our wedding back in the halcyon days of 2019 for 08/08/2020, putting down an £800 deposit for the reception and another amount for the church and caterers. As the pandemic unfolded, like many, we started haemorrhaging money left, right and centre. We soon had a communication from our church to say that no services could be held before October 2020. On contacting the wedding venue and requesting to cancel, we were told we would only get a refund if they were to cancel, not us. They argued we could technically still hold the wedding reception as they were only limited to 15 people at that stage (late March/early April). They soon came to the conclusion that weddings couldn't continue and offered us a postponement until 2021. We again asked to cancel and get a refund but were told we would not only lose the deposit but pay a cancellation fee too,so we agreed to reschedule for August 2021.
Since then, our finances have deteriorated even further, to the point whereby we can't fund our original wedding plans. I recently came across the government guidance on wedding refunds and saw this as a ray of hope. Having read around a bit, it seems now that even with this guidance, nobody is getting refunds, even with the help of a solicitor.
I suppose what I want to know is:
a) do we have any grounds to request a refund?
b) what is the best way to go about it?
C) can we request refunds from the church and caterer too?
I've seen somewhere that the Financial Ombudsman can make decisions, if your initial plea falls on deaf ears. Is this a good way to go?
Any help/guidance with this would be amazing.
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