I am at the point of exhaustion and just wanting to call it a day on the whole wedding malarky!
We got engaged in November 2018 and our wedding was planned for 25th July 2020. It was to be a church wedding with 120 guests followed by a big reception. Really early on in the pandemic, we were encouraged by our reception venue to postpone to next year and we were happy to postpone until 14th August 2021.
In about August this year, I started hearing rumours about the venue's change in direction and struggled to get an answer off anyone working there. They would not reply to any of my emails or phonecalls. I did a bit of digging and discovered that we were the only wedding booked there for next Summer. After getting well and truly fed up and writing a slightly shirty message on their Facebook page, I had a phonecall from the CEO. In this phonecall (around 4 weeks ago), I was told that they would be unable to hold our wedding reception. There were no options given, not really an explanation, just 'your reception is cancelled'. I am still waiting on getting our deposit back.
Anyway, I have spent the past 4 weeks frantically contacting EVERY single venue I can think of in the local area (we are marrying at my family church and don't really want to travel more than 1.5hours to the reception venue) and we have had no luck. There is ONE venue that has availability on that date. They are far from our first choice, but the venue looks nice enough. The reason I had not contacted them sooner was because everyone in the area has said they had gone bust over the summer, but were still continuing to trade. We are booked in to have a look around on the weekend, but being an accountant, I had a look on Companies House and they are, in fact, in liquidation!!
So now I just don't know what to do. We will go for a look at this venue on Sunday and ask them about their insolvency, but I just feel like it's not a good idea to book with a company that is already in the process of being wound down?
We would be open to changing the date if need be, but I would feel bad going back to our other suppliers like church, photographer, videographer, florist, hairdresser etc who were so good when we originally had to postpone. We would try to find a date that works for most suppliers, but we have 7 other weddings next year, and my sister-in-law to be is a wedding photographer and would be limited in what dates she could attend (we are very very close and can't imagine her not being there for our day).
We also fully understand that having 120 people is probably not going to be very likely and would be very willing to cut the numbers. At the moment, I'm seriously considering calling the whole thing off, getting married in a registry office and just being done with it.
Is anyone else in a similar situation, or able to offer any help/advice/thoughts?
