So this may very long, apologies in advance.
Our current wedding date is August 28, 2021 in central Ohio. We have been considering the need to postpone since this past Thanksgiving, so this decision is not being made lightly.
We had a meeting with our venue just a few days ago, which is a venue that rather "all-inclusive" (they provide food, DJ, etc), and during that meeting we discussed postponement quite a bit. Per our contract, it was our understanding that we are allowed one postponement and that decision must be notified at least 180 days before the day of the event (so March 1 for us) and that the next event must occur within one year of the original event. We then asked what the availability of dates looked like for next year (because if they didn't have anything good available then ok, that's our decision made for us then). Our event coordinator mentioned a date in July, a date in August, etc.
After researching yesterday and finding out that the events that are being held at our venue now are EXTREMELY limited in what you can do (no dancing, guests seated at tables the entire reception, masks unless you are actively eating or drinking, all drinks served tableside), PLUS the fact that we would still be held to a required minimum head count of 140, we decided that we were not going to try and risk keeping our original date and asked if we could please postpone to the date in August 2022 that was mentioned in our meeting from a few days ago. Our coordinator seems all but certain that those restrictions will be lifted come August, but I just feel that confidence is misplaced. And we figured that we would rather be paying all of our money into an event that would actually be enjoyable for our guests, and there's no guarantee that this August would provide that.
After not hearing a response all morning, I called our venue and reached our coordinator's manager, who told us that there had been a mix-up and that we are not allowed to postpone within a year of our original DATE, but within a year of when we TELL THEM we want to postpone. So essentially, we are not allowed to postpone to next August; we would be postponing to February 2022 at the LATEST.
We're obviously extremely upset about this; our venue has a gorgeous outdoor courtyard where we were going to be married during August, but a Midwest winter wedding means that wouldn't happen. We feel like we're almost being forced to keep our original date, that we DO NOT feel comfortable keeping, because of this strict contractual language.
Does anyone have any advice? We are just so extremely unhappy and feel forced to either put our guests at risk at an event that's barely considered a wedding or postpone to a season we did not want to get married in (there's a reason we chose a summer date in the first place!) At this point, we'd love to just cancel our big event altogether and opt for a small ceremony and have that be the end of it, but we've paid in nearly 20k (all of which is non-refundable) so we can't back out now.
