Wedding venue in receivership/examinership

efar

I don’t normally post things like this but I really don’t want others to get caught out as we did. When my fiancé and I heard the hotel we were getting married in went into receivership we were extremely worried. This was exacerbated by the fact that we are trying to plan our wedding from abroad. When we couldn’t get a written assurance from the hotel that our date was secure (exactly one year before our wedding) we had no option but find an alternative venue for the same date. We had to do this to prevent losing all of the suppliers we had paid deposits to. We stand to lose the €2,000 that we paid to the hotel over and above the €1000 deposit we were required to pay to secure the booking.

My reason for posting this is I want to warn people that aside from your deposit if you pay any further advance payments towards the costs of your wedding the hotel's receiver may try to argue that these are also non-refundable if your hotel gets into financial trouble. Please, please remember this when making any voluntary payments to your hotel in advance of your wedding. We are still fighting to try to get our advance payment back, but it seems that it would have been much easier to keep it in a savings account!

I do not want anyone else to go through this. We can't make any more plans for our wedding until we get this money back. It was all of our savings.

davo2001

Currently planning our wedding at the moment, deposit paid and date secured but will not be paying anything else until the day for fear something like this might happen.
Should your wedding insurance not cover this issue?

chris85

And also good idea to pay any deposit on a credit card initially. If they do go bust you can do a chargeback through your credit card provider for the money paid.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Keep in mind that many hotels are currently in this position and trading perfectly as normal.

ABajaninCork

I've posted something similar in the Weddings forum. Used to work as an Event Manager in London and ran a lot of weddings.

I would always tell clients the following:

NEVER EVER pay for the big ticket items like the venue, dress, cars in cash. Always use either a credit card or Visa Debit. If there's problems, then a chargeback can be initiated. Don't even do a bank transfer as that will be treated as cash.

Take out wedding insurance. Doesn't cost a lot, but could save an awful lot of heartache in the long run. I've seen a lot of couples broke and stressed out because supplier have let them down for whatever reason, and they don't have the cash to replace items.

Get any quotes/agreements made in writing. Don't rely on phone calls which can easily be lost in translation!

If the venue goes into receivership/examinership, get written assurances from the receivers that your wedding will be going ahead as planned.

So sorry to hear of your situation, OP and hope you can get it resolved.

January

What's a written assurance going to do if the hotel goes down the pan the day before the wedding? Sure you might have comeback afterwards but I doubt you could force them into doing the wedding if they went bust the day before. It's one of the reasons we didn't go with my dream venue, they're in receivership but trading normally, I still wouldn't take the chance because when I rang my wedding insurance company they told me the venue wouldn't be covered because it was in receivership before we took out the policy (before we'd even booked the venue).

ABajaninCork

January wrote: »

What's a written assurance going to do if the hotel goes down the pan the day before the wedding? Sure you might have comeback afterwards but I doubt you could force them into doing the wedding if they went bust the day before. .

That's why you get a written assurance. It strengthens your hand in the event you make a claim - assuming of course you've taken out insurance BEFORE the event...

January wrote: »

It's one of the reasons we didn't go with my dream venue, they're in receivership but trading normally, I still wouldn't take the chance because when I rang my wedding insurance company they told me the venue wouldn't be covered because it was in receivership before we took out the policy (before we'd even booked the venue).

If you already knew the venue might be in financial difficulty when you take out the insurance, then obviously the insurance won't cover that if they thought you knew in advance! Makes sense, doesn't it?

OTOH - if you've taken out the insurance beforehand and the venue does go under later, then you're covered...

efar

We weren't aware wedding insurance existed until this happened !! So, no we don't have any. In future, I will never pay any more than a deposit. I really wish we didn't pay any more money.

ABajaninCork

Did you pay by cash/cheque or by a credit card?

efar

ABajaninCork wrote: »

Did you pay by cash/cheque or by a credit card?

We only paid one part by credit card and we are trying to get that back