Cancelling hotel wedding contract due to job loss

6 months ago signed our wedding contract with a hotel. One month after that, my fiancee lost his job of 14 years out of nowhere, his company let go 7 people that day.
He has been looking for a job, and has had to pay high health insurance costs, got unemployment, etc etc. Long story short, we want to move the wedding up, so he can get on my insurance. Thinking a small ceremony or at the courthouse, and a nice dinner with immediate family and one or two friends. Well, dummy us, in our bliss of finding a venue we liked, we didnt understand out hotel cancellation terms and basically the day we walked out the door after signing, we owed them 25% of the total if we cancelled. And the $ just keeps going up from there the closer it gets to the date.

We have talked to them, explained the job loss, understand if we lose our initial deposit, but to charge us more to cancel when this is one of those unplanned circumstances, is making me so down about wedding planning. Its bad enough that he lost his job, but now to deal with the negotiationg and losing deposits cause we dont want to spend everything we have saved up for the wedding, it's too much. The priorities have changed now. We dont know how long it will take for him to get a job, he is going to do some contract work in the meantime.
They have thrown us an option, to pay the cancellation fee and we can have an event there, but they havent specified terms or even if it has to be the reception menu or what, BUT it HAS to be in October cause of their bookeeping, our original date or whatever day we want. We were like, huh, how exactly does that help us, we still have to move the wedding up for other reasons, cant we have a dinner there afterwards just sooner?
My story is long, but I feel so down about the way everything has been going to this point.
Has anyone had luck getting their money back or not to having to pay the cancellation fee to,their venue?? Would appreciate any tips you can give me. At this point, I am ready to pay them the money to cancel and walk away, it would be less money than if we wait until October to have a dinner with them.
I thought job loss would be one of those things that was part of Circumstances Outside of,our Control! Thanks everyone