Wedding lawsuit due to pandemic

Yes. This vender kept all of our money!!! 3500.00 dollars. We sued and got 5000.00 back!! Seek legal counsel, because we didn't bring corona here. Not our fault. Get your money!!!

View Quoted Comment Moving forward, we would ask for them to be responsible for all legal fees and add emotional distress to the suit. We’ll see how this goes. Really wish it didn’t have to be this way. Thank you so much.

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Totally! I was just adding that sometimes being excused from performance by force majeure isn't the end of the discussion and doesn't always mean the bride will "lose"!

View Quoted Comment Oh my gosh I’m so thankful to hear one positive outcome retrieving your money back! I haven’t heard of any success thus far. Chances are most couples are probably still in litigation so they can’t discuss. Did you hire an attorney or go through small claims? What state do you live in?

I appreciated your knowledge on unjust enrichment. I’m learning a lot through this forum! If I can help any other brides I definitely will do whatever I can!

I am currently going through this. My venue cancelled my wedding on 3/28 and forced me into rescheduling which I did. They called me again two weeks before to cancel again and are trying to get me to reschedule again. I consulted a lawyer as well who suggested because I was only in the hole 7500 that I should take a number of steps before filing a small claims case. I tried to go to a higher manager at the venue which did not work. I am now in the process of filing a complaint with the attorney general of my state and the better business bureau. If nothing comes of that then I will go the small claims route. The contract and law are clear according to the lawyer, the venue is just hedging their bets that no one will take the time to sue them. Good luck, don’t give up!

View Quoted Comment I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this chaos as well. Your situation sounds like ours. I definitely agree that they’re not taking our threat seriously. They may possibly be trying to give themself some time. We won’t back down. I hope it all works out in your favor also!

View Quoted Comment Again, if you just rescheduled the date and didn’t jump the gun and get married before hand, it would of been fine. Also no I don’t know your financial situation however trying to use the pandemic and state mandated orders to justify a refund when you signed a contract isn’t going to work. Again you are not the only bride going through this.

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Hold up here...If she “didn’t jump the gun and get married?” Judging much? Yet you’re throwing it in her face that other brides are going through this too...of course they are, that’s why she posted here to find out if anyone has had any luck suing or obtaining a refund. Also many brides are quote unquote jumping the gun and getting married (aka eloping) because we are in a pandemic and everyone is having to change plans.

View Quoted Comment Wow you’re wild! Lmao jump the gun? Do you know how long we were engaged? I also planned a wedding for a whole year. Clearly, there is no end in sight to the virus... So according to you, you think it’s fair for me to sit back, put my life and wedding on hold while the world is crashing. There is a ton of other issues we would’ve faced if we postponed our wedding, that you’re clearly unaware of. If it wasn’t for the mandated order we would’ve had a wedding at the venue, right? Instead, i put my big girl pants on and moved along with making arrangements to STILL GET MARRIED ON OUR DATE! We agreed to a date and the contract therefor is null and void. I am obviously aware I am not the only bride going through is and I’m more than willing to help them out with their situation with the knowledge I have learned from my experience. Be blessed!

I would vet this lawyer very carefully and make sure their fees are reasonable. I am surprised they're so confident in your case.


It would have been illegal for the venue to perform on the original contract. They offered you a postponement. You wanted your money back. They offered you 5k as a settlement. I don't practice law in TX, so I don't know if the law is on your side. From what I can remember, seeking money for emotional distress would be very ambitious.
Where I'm at, the courts are very clogged but finally have the virtual appearance thing figured out. Cases keep getting pushed back because of the packed calendar.
Your lawyer can easily rack up bills by virtue of waiting for your case to get called, popping in on a hearing only to get it pushed back. Repeat this a few times, you may be spending more in legal fees than you recoup.
I'd look into someone who works on a contingency basis or charges a flat fee.

View Quoted Comment I’ve spoken to two attorneys. They’re both confident in the case. I totally understand that it would’ve been illegal for them to move forward with our wedding, it was neither of our fault. There is no way we can choose a new day with current circumstances. Holding us accountable and taking our money, in my opinion, is morally unethical. People have lost jobs and family members, there’s more to this unfortunate circumstance than just our wedding! 5k out of 25k is insane for absolutely no service. I don’t see how anyone can think that’s reasonable? There’s multiple lawsuits against venues in Texas that have added the clause of emotional distress. I don’t see our case going to a judge, rather us settling in litigation. I’m pretty sure the venue doesn’t want a bad reputation and a lawsuit all over the news. In order to avoid that they’ll most likely settle before it goes further.

View Quoted Comment They offered you to move your date, so they did what they can. The state (and 150k+ people dead in the US) caused your event date to be cancelled.

View Quoted Comment I understand why my wedding was “cancelled”. Just like they did what they could, as did I. I got married on the date my husband and I agreed on. As of now, I would have to postpone(if I considered) till next year because there is still restrictions in place that allow them only 50% capacity. Not that’s enough for our guest count. So holding onto our funds and forcing brides to choose a new date a year away is totally unacceptable. This is not how business works, unfortunately.

FH and I have known since June that there was no way our venue could honor our contract due to the state's gathering restrictions. Our venue insisted that they were going forward and that we needed to pay in full. Finally, last week (one month before our date) they cancelled our rental and issued us our refund.

We were lucky that our contract specifically stated we would receive a full refund if the venue was the one to cancel for any reason, including acts of god (we specifically checked while looking at venues--gotta be careful about hurricane season weddings in the South!). We'd have forfeited our payments if we cancelled instead of dragging our heels waiting for them to acknowledge they needed to cancel. Plenty of other folks have weighed in on the legal elements at play, so I will just say that I think you are completely within your rights to try to get your money back if your venue breached your contract, and I'm wishing you and your fam all the best!

In the same boat except the owner of my venue ruined our wedding entirely by backing us into a corner, not giving us an option to postpone and making the current date we had impossible. AND refused a refund. I looked into getting a lawyer and its just sooo expensive. Personally i had a hard time getting over the fact i’d be putting out more money on top of what our venue already stole from us. Sometimes writing reviews and reporting them to news stations etc. will get you farther than suing. That being said, if your deposit was tens of thousands of dollars and you cant get it back, suing is probably worthwhile for you

Your first step should be contacting consumer reports advocates at the local news stations and tell your story. Go from there with a lawyer willing to take your case.

Crystal, I just want to say how sorry I am for what you're going through and offer some support. As devastated as I am about how much our upcoming wedding has changed, I cannot imagine being a March/April/May/etc. bride earlier this year. At least we've had time to adjust our plans and have some control over the day -- I feel like you and many other brides had little to no warning, and not much in the way of choice.

I think people forget how scary things were when this first started emerging, and how quickly information (and misinformation, for that matter) changed. With states and venues handling things differently, and so much uncertainty, how is anyone supposed to make a perfect decision?

Everyone's situation is unique to them, and postponing comes with its own set of risks. Venues are going out of business and changing policies. People have aging or dying family members. There are pre-planned moves and military deployments. Pregnancies. Changing finances and job stability. While these things have been happening for years, a pandemic compounds them; nothing about this year is easy or black and white. We don't even know what next year is going to look like.

Legality aside, I can't see how any reasonable person would be like, "No services rendered, but they're keeping the full $25k? Sounds completely fair!"

I hope you can recoup at least some of that money, and I am so sorry your dream wedding was taken away from you.

Same here. They are demanding more money saying we canceled.

Supposed to be August bride here.

Reading the thread here....just to clarify, most couples who are trying to sue their venue is not because of the simple fact that COVID happened, their wedding did not occur, and now the couple wants to cancel. NO!!! These venues are being RIDICULOUS right now! They are ASKING to be SUED! They are asking couples to pay 2021 PRICING and upping the fees up to 25% of total bill!!!!!! & then they sit here like "Oh I wonder why we are being sued". Because if YOU ARE AN ETHICAL AND MORAL BUSINESS, you would NEVER do this to couples during COVID. It is nobody's fault. If these venues were WILLING to WORK with their clients, they would still have their couples!!! Me and my fiancee included.

I am in NJ (so is our venue) and they were asking us to still pay a weekend fee and move our wedding to a weekDAY!!!!! like what are you TALKING ABOUT!!!! weekend pricing and weekday pricing differ SIGNIFICANTLY!! It was either this or move our date to 2021 and have our total bill increased to 25%. LOL. If I was there I would have laughed in their face.

ANYWAY, we did not get too far into sueing, thank god. We got an attorney who wrote up a demand letter stating EVERYTHING (the facts, the email chains, our contract) and our venue sent the check to our lawyer with our $ minus admin fees. They did not say anything to us or our lawyer. They simply sent a check. Very professional!!!!

If your venue is like ours, and still closed, they are most likely taking government money. There are many venues that got CREATIVE and made BEAUTIFUL tents outside for outdoor ceremony/reception. If our venue did that, we would have!! So again, their LOSS!