Weddingbee Blog

In my last post I described how happy we were with ourselves for deciding to have a long engagement, as it was pretty easy to find an awesome reception place. Well, let me tell you, that feeling came back to bite us in the b*** big time!

As some of you probably already know, a long engagement has many advantages and disadvantages: one disadvantage is that things change.

Source

Months ago we chose the Hotel Du Parc as our reception venue. We were very happy with our choice, as the place met all our requirements and we got along very well with the restaurant manager.

And then life happened: the restaurant manager we had verbally agreed to everything with did not renew his contract with the hotel management. We found out about this about one month before we were supposed to sign the contract and eight months before the wedding. (Note how he smartly fixed our contract signing after the renegotiation time period.)

We were told to contact a temporary manager (a new restaurant manager had not yet been found) who assured us that all the conditions and decisions we’d made would still be valid, and told us not to worry as nothing would change. Well, guess what? When we finally met in person seven months before the wedding, we found out this wasn’t the case.

Since we didn’t have a signed contract, we were told that all the verbal agreements made by the previous manager were “wrong.” The main changes were:

• We would not have the use of the garden.
• The price would be higher. (They felt the one we’d agreed on was too low.)
• There would be a new restaurant manager, but at the time one had not been found yet so we would not know who we’d be dealing with for our wedding.

But the worst thing of all was that we did not feel comfortable or secure with the hotel management, which had a very “if you don’t like it, someone else will” mentality. We were crushed and did not know what to do anymore.

On one hand, the mere thought of having to start looking again for a venue seven months out was daunting…We really did not want to have to do that, and we didn’t even know where to start! The venue itself still met all of our requirements, and we still loved the place. We could also fit the higher costs in our budget, as it’s true that we had gotten a pretty good deal with the previous manager.

On the other hand, the reception is the most important and expensive part of a wedding: I think it’s important to feel secure about that choice, and I did not like the uncomfortable feelings that I had with dealing with the hotel management. I felt we were put in a corner, which I did not appreciate.

I also believe that a wedding is an opportunity to support honest, local, and professional businesses. To choose to spend a large chunk of our budget on a business that practiced policies I did not agree with seemed wrong.

What would you have done?

PS: If there’s a lesson here, it’s GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING the minute you reach a final agreement. We were a bit naive, and that resulted in our first major wedding fail…