Wedding Issues - Help!!

susb

Hi gang,

Sorry I'm new to this but having an absolute nightmare at the moment with our wedding venue.

We booked it for October back in December and the venue itself is beautiful, as well as the area having a special place for my family.
Anyway, all seemed great at the get go and we put our initial deposit down.

Things went a bit funny when we got our contracts in the post - there were a few things on it that I wasn't happy about so I called them and they said that it's all fine, the contracts need to be updated, etc. Essentially it was taking no liability if things went wrong, they could cancel at any notice etc. Needless to say, we didn't sign it.

Then when we asked about when we could have our tasting, they told us that they didn't do tastings but they'll send us photos so we can choose the menu from that...
I get that not everywhere does tastings but our venue isn't cheap and we don't know anyone who has had a wedding there... How can you base food for 180 guests off a photo. Anyway, they had an open weekend a few weeks ago and we asked if we could join for a dinner (as they aren't a restaurant, they only have open weekends when there is no wedding on).
We went with our families and the setting truly is stunning. However, the meal itself was just not good.

From when we arrived, no one took our wine orders and there were no servers around checking things were ok. We had to wait until our starter was brought out before we could ask a server for wine and then they brought them out and just plonked the bottles on the table. They also didn't give us the cutlery for the starter so we had to ask for that as well.
The staff were generally very young and inexperienced, but the biggest problem for me was that there was no one watching and overseeing this.
The food itself was really disappointing too - I ordered fillet of beef (which we wanted to have for the wedding) and it was an incredible fatty piece of steak that had been quickly seared on a pan so that it looked cooked but was rare on the inside and I'd ordered it medium. I barely ate it and no one questioned it when they took it away. The only person who was happy with their main was my dad who had lamb which he said was 'nice'.
After being to so many weddings, food is really important to us, and we knew it was a bit of a gamble going somewhere we didn't have a direct review of but we didn't think it would be so lacklustre. We have since heard really mixed reviews of the food there from friends of friends who said not to order the duck, the fillet of beef, etc.

The final nail in the coffin was yesterday when I sent out an email to my friends with the cottage accommodation onsite (that sleeps about 70 people, we also have 30 rooms in the venue itself). It was previously owned separate to our venue and I had been in contact with them in January to hold them for our wedding party. We are having a day 2 in the venue as well so most will be staying for at least 2 nights. Anyway, she was told the accommodation was full. I obviously freaked out and called them, to be told the accommodation has been recently taken over by our wedding venue. They informed me that they had taken a booking from a bride the week after mine and they have block booked it for the full week as they are coming from America. Apparently in the changeover, bookings and provisional bookings were lost but you would THINK they would call the couples who have their weddings on and give priority to them on their dates! She then told me to call a hotel about a 10 min drive away to see if they can host our guests.
90% of the people attending this are travelling over 2 hours and a huge reason we booked this venue is so everyone can be on site. They said they'll 'ask' the american bride if she will give up the booking for 2 of the nights but that this is obviously not guaranteed. The only reason they even said this was because I freaked out and said I will pull it unless we get suitable accom.

It's been the most incredibly stressful and upsetting thing and I genuinely feel like I no longer want to have my wedding there but it's 6 month to the big day.
We have paid 1500e as deposit and that's it...

Can anyone offer any advice? Am I completely overreacting??

Boards.ie: Mark

Hi susb,

Welcome to Boards. The best place to get advice and insight would be the Weddings forum.