Feeling failed by our wedding venue

I totally agree with Savvy Sue, Aylesbury Duck and Mrs Imp, about concentrating on all the good points about the wedding. OP, I would bet that your bride looked beautiful, you made lovely wedding vows to each other and had a lot of special people in your lives there to witness this. Don't let the "dark cloud" hide all the sunshine.

There is usually something at a wedding that goes not quite to plan and it often does provide fun and laughter for many years afterwards.

In regard to our wedding, my husband's 3 year old nephew fell into a large puddle in his wedding suit on his way into the church and had to change into a dinosaur tshirt and shorts to go down the aisle. He does looks cute in the wedding photos. The hired videoman fell onto the wedding cake and damaged the top tier and the topper. He was so upset. I just said don't worry and put it all back on top. It is always a laughing point when the photos show us posing happily in front of a loop sided damaged cake with a broken topper on it. A cousin fell on the dance floor when dancing to the band and hurt her knee so badly she had to be treated by friends who were nurses and the bar staff with ice. Luckily she was alright afterwards.

At a family wedding lat summer, I spent time getting meals sorted as the vegetarian members of the party were given meat dishes in error. The staff couldn't find where they had stored the wedding cake and which had been delivered the day before and the bestman had to deal with that. The balloons on the table had deflated due to the cold air conditioning being on too high. The grooms mother who was disabled was not given the pre-booked and paid for disabled room, so had to sort that out. We all still had a really lovely day.

I agree with others that you should take their "goodwill" offer of a stay and maybe request for wine and a meal and get on with continuing to enjoy your new married life together.

I honestly think you should stop brooding over it and move on.

^^^^^^^^^ This !!!

While I agree that you can't re-do the day, so your best bet is to focus on the positives and move on, if you do whnt to pursue a complaint about the room not being available when promised, then refer them to the e-mail confirming that it would be available from 12 the previous day, point out what time it was actually made available to you, and ask for a discount equal to the cost of room hire for that amount of time (e.g. i the room costs £100 hour to hire, and you didn't have access until 3 when you were contracted to have it by 12, ask for £300.)

But do double check what you actually paid for - if you paid for the room from 12 on the day before, then you didn't get what you paid for and a partial refund is reasonable. If you only actually paid for the day of the wedding and the other time was a free add on then it is harder to argue that you should be entitled to anything.

Why are you unwilling to put out a public review? If someone else had done it first, you might have gone elsewhere. Think of it as your service to another couple.

I havent read the whole thread. I am really sorry this happened on your wedding day - its not something you can easily forgive or forget.
I would say if you paid more than £100 on a credit card. Put in a claim for a section 75 TBH you have nothing to lose. If the section 75 team ruled in your favour they would refund you something. If you not happy with the invesitgation by credit card company - section 75 team you can always go to the ombudsman. I am not expert - section 75 I believe also covers services so I think this issue will be covered.