Hi all
I hope you dont mind me posting my experience of this awful venue. We have had a long struggle through courts to get our money back and have had 9 months of sleepless nights because of it, but we have finally come out the other end and it is my mission to warn other brides of this truely horrendous wedding venue.
Here goes ....
Our nightmare with the Blazing Donkey began last year (2009). It looked like a lovely venue for our wedding and we received a very persuasive sales pitch from the manager/owner (Mr Martin).
We paid a massive £4950 over the phone for our weekday wedding for 2010 (we were told the only way we could secure the supposed 'discount' was to pay within 24 hours!!
We did not receive a receipt of confirmation of booking and we spent nearly 3 months chasing for this. All emails and phone calls were ignored.
Finally, we received an email from the wedding coordinator to tell us they didnt know who we were, when we had booked for etc etc - they had no record of us on file.
We lost all confidence in the venue and requested to cancel.
We were told the owner was unavailable but when we turned up at the venue, he was there - he denied all knowledge of my emails and phone calls and said that he had sent our confirmation by post (a lie as he did not have our address). We handed him a letter requesting return of our money. We received lots of support from trading standards, consumer direct and from on here!
Two more letters later (and four weeks later) he did not reply. After a fourth, we received an email to say we would not be getting our money back unless he sold the date on.
We then started court proceedings in the small claims court for the return of our money - again, he did not respond. We won the case by default but after 3 more weeks, he still he did not pay up. We instructed bailiffs to get our money back and once he received his bailiff papers he wrote to court to say he had not received the court papers (he said we had put the wrong address on the papers - same address as he advertises on his website though).
A court date was then set for his hearing, he did not turn up, we did and again, we won by default. He still refused to pay and finally after 9 months, the bailiffs went back in and got the money for us.
The
Blazing Donkey reviews on trip advisor are horrendous and I know of
many people who have been taken in by this venue and have lost their
money. I am not the first and will not be the last to be taken in by
the Blazing Donkey. They have ruined our wedding, we should be getting
married in less than 2 months, instead we have only just got our money
back and we have no wedding to look forward to.
Please do not make the same mistake that we did and book your wedding here.
