Limited Guest Capacity

I didn't experience this but one of my husband's friends got married earlier this month and we went to his wedding. He told us while we were there that they had to cut 75 people from their guest list due to their venue's new guest capacity due to COVID. He said that they did get money back on the food that they prepaid for because they did a plated, sit-down dinner and they used the venue's catering. The only way to know for sure if to check your contract to see if, by chance, something is in there about the venue limiting capacity and refunds. If there isn't I'd just bring it up to the venue like "since capacity is going to be limited, will this change our final total in any way?". It's a valid question and they shouldn't have an issue answering it

We ended up postponing, but if we hadn't postponed, our venue was willing to remove the minimum guest count restriction and only charge us for the guests that showed up. From what I've heard, venues are all handling this differently. Some are willing to let people postpone/cancel at no extra cost, others are charging a fee to reschedule, and others won't let people postpone at all. You could ask your venue about it as a hypothetical scenario - tell them that you're not sure if it'll be an issue yet, but in the event that fewer guests RSVP than what you already paid for, will they refund the difference? That way, you'll be aware of the policy ahead of time.

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I'm glad they were able to get money back. that's true, it doesn't hurt to ask.

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Your venue sounds reasonable lol. We have our tasting December 9, guess I could bring it up then. thanks!

View Quoted Comment I think that's a great time to ask about it! Enjoy your tasting!

Yes, our guest list went from 175 to 60 and our food & beverage minimum was decreased by the venue and at the end of it we were refunded money as fewer guests came.

Most venues are willing to take less money as long as they can have an event! The time to negotiate is definitely now

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That's really good to know. we have 120 guests for May and honestly I don't think that's gonna happen. I'm fine with that though I just wanna get married lol