Wedding deposit query

M

marcc

Guest
Hi all,
I hope you can give me some advice. Firstly Our wedding venue has a 1,000 euro deposit from us and its now wants another 3,500 for a wedding in December. All these deposits are non-refundable. Its a small wedding of around 90 guests and this has really annoyed me and left a bad taste in our mouths. I have refused to pay over half the total cost to a business that has at this moment not had to spend any money to accomodate our wedding. In this economic climate there is no way I am prepared to pay such a large deposit to a business that might or might not be there in December. We rang other venues to check their booking policy and see if this is common practice and they told us they would only require one deposit. During these conversations the venues were prepared to give us really good value and discounts. If we cancel (giving our venue 6 months notice) and rebook in another venue can we legally get our deposit of 1,000 back. Also we booked holiday homes for the guests to stay in and they took 75% of the total cost from their credit cards to secure the booking. This i think was cheeky also. They stated they were non-refundable. If we cancel them do we have a right to ask for our deposit back. We are giving them 6 months notice.
 
I checked it last nite and sure enough it did say about a second deposit. Typically we scanned over the contract and missed it. But we asked the organiser in january when we handed over the first deposit when she wanted to hear from us again and she said that november time was good once we had the final figures on the guest list.
 
Don't get me wrong we love this venue and will probably still get married there but its the small things they do that is annoying me now when I see how other venues are going the extra mile to attract business. For example You can't bring your own wine just select from them at a price north of 20 euros per bottle for your house wine. I just need to know where we stood in relation to deposits etc before I go and see them.
 
marcc said:
I checked it last nite and sure enough it did say about a second deposit. Typically we scanned over the contract and missed it.
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If it's in the contract, there's not much you can do about it. You could threaten to cancel the booking (losing you the first deposit) and move to a cheaper, more flexible venue and see if they can be a more open to negotiation.
 
Once you have paid over a deposit, it is very difficult to negotiate these things. You really need to check the small print beforehand.

Giving a big deposit is indeed a big risk in the current environment, where hotels have gone bust leaving customers in the lurch. If you do pay the deposit, do it by credit card, as that might give you some protection. You might be able to save more than the €1k deposit by switching to a venue that allows you to bring in your own wine at a low corkage charge, mind you.
 
I was in a similar situation about six months ago. We had paid a €1000 deposit to a hotel for wedding booking. Five months before the wedding the hotel sent us out new price lists. Price increases were in the order of 12-16%. After several attempts to negotiate with the hotel, to no avail, we cancelled our booking.

We looked around and found other hotels were willing to offer super discounts to get business. Hotels that were out of our price range two years ago, when we first booked our wedding, had decreased their prices. In the end we held our reception in a much nicer hotel (four star instead of three star), and the price of the food was substantially cheaper than the original, free corkage, free arrival reception, free afters food and free bar extension. We saved about €3000! And nothing was too much trouble for the hotel, even offered us two extra nights in the bridal suite.........again for free!

We have requested that our deposit be returned from the original hotel, but I’d say there is little chance of that.
 
If they tried to increase prices over what they had committed to you, they were out of order. Go for the small claims court to get your deposit returned.
 
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