Cancelled Wedding venue?

[ROME2MANDALAY]

First of all apologies if I have posted this in the wrong subforum.

 

We are getting married at the end of October in Worcester (we live in Birmingham).

We are only getting married in Worcester as I found an amazing deal on Ebay for the wedding breakfast/reception which would've saved us a fortune in comparison with other venues.

 

I won the auction and was over the moon with what we got for the price. Visited venue - Perfect.

We then proceeded to book the wedding at a castle in Worcester which wasn't far from the venue, booked the registrar, chair covers, cars etc....all of which have been centered around the venue in Worcester and deposits have been paid.

 

The venue called me last week to say they had some bad news for us, they were closing in September.

It is a country pub and basically the brewery have been messing them around by increasing prices etc....so they have ended the lease. They have had to cancel all their weddings.

The girl offered us 3 options:

 

1. We could wait to see if they get a buyer (not a chance - too risky and we don't have the time)

2. Full refund

3. We could transfer the package to their sister hotel, a few miles away.

 

We have already booked the hotel out for the night for guests to stay and it is lovely. The only problem is they can only fit 40 guests in the restaurant for the sit down meal (we have 61!!).

 

So, she said they have a marquee which could be used so we could get everyone in and this sounded like a good idea to us.

We went to visit the hotel yesterday and she showed us to the marquee which wasn't how we imagined. It was dirty, the carpet was filthy, the marquee poles on show. It just looked more like a cold plain dirty circus tent if I'm honest.

 

Not suitable for a wedding. The girl got a bit funny with us saying that all the other couples she showed this to have been pleased with it. I would be embarrassed to take guests there tbh.

 

She offered the marquee to us for £500 as they would have to hire a kitchen, staff etc...

We really thought they should pay as they have ruined everything for us but they have offered us 18 bottles of wine for the tables as an apology. We expressed our concern about the marquee and she said she will email me this afternoon to see if they can do anything to make it look nicer (drapes, fairy lights etc...).

 

I am basically wondering if we can take this further with anyone? My partner has lost all trust in this venue so if she says she can do something to the marquee, he will not take it as something else could happen down the line.

 

We have been looking at other venues in Worcester and they cost a few thousand pounds. We won this for £512.00 for everything. I don't think we will find anything in Worcs so it is more than likely we will have to cancel and rebook everything in Birmingham which we will lose our deposits for everything.

 

Where do we stand legally? I have no written contract from them, just a receipt and details of the Ebay package.

 

Sorry this is so long xx

[assisted blonde]

It is a sad fact that the leisure industry is prone to closing venues with little notice at least you have had some prior warning, to be honest you are not going to find anything for the sort of money you paid as it was obviously going to be a bit of a loss leader for the company if they are going out of business there isnt much point in trying to get any more money out of them because they probably havent got it.

If you want to get out of this with as little loss to yourselves as possible then I would accept the marque, decorated up it would look totally different to when its empty this would seem to be your only real option as you say you have already booked the hotel etc and if you cancel you will loose your deposits.

The venue have offered 3 options and I really dont see that there is anything more that they can do in view of the circumstances