My wedding cancelled due to flooding the day before the wedding

Hmmm...I think if there was no mechanism in the contract for a refund then you may be out of luck. I am sorry about the flooding. It really was awful for all involved. I understand the venue calling off the wedding because no water and electricity is a health hazard. It is unfortunate that you were not able to reschedule. In this case I think you hae to bite the bullet.

I had already postponed my wedding but the week of when my wedding was supposed to happen my venue closed down suddenly. I would have been out of luck with no venue and no possibility of having a refund or being able to get a new date there. Lesson learned: Buy wedding insurance.

I hope you are able to negotiate something from the venue at the end of the day. Good luck!

I would call them or go up there and ask them to do the right thing and refund all or at least half the money. IF you get NO for an answer consider the BBB. Do your local news stations have investigator reporters? I am from St Louis and all 3 have investigator reporters who help people try to get $ back from home contractors, car dealerships, towing company etc that are screwing the little guy over. No company in their right mind wants that kind of bad publicity. There is always small claims court if that doesn't help.

Would you have been able to have the wedding there without electricity? Im going to guess in the end they could win because of the act of god clause. BUT could you sue them at the local level? In my state all you have to do is go to the district justice and pay a filing fee, uou don't even need to hire an attorney. Its a pretty simple process. You may lose in the end, BUT maybe the suite would encourage the owners to at least refund something

If this happened to me I'd want all my money back, so I don't think you're being greedy for wanted 50% of it back. I would think most places would just keep the deposit and give the rest back, but I have no idea. I also don't see what you would use the place for if you opted for the reschedule option! Sorry I don't have any advice, but good work pulling your wedding together in the end. Good luck with the venue!

We actually could have had the wedding without electricity. We have two generators that we could have used and we could have bought water. Sure it would have been a little difficult. When you book at this place, you have to pay for an extras beforehand. You have to pay for the horse and carriage, the soft drinks, the bartender and even $150.00 for the margarita machine. They have no issues with keeping the optional service fees we had to pay up front. The other thing is if you post a comment on their Facebook page and they don't like it, they just delete it. What is the point of a review page when they delete the negative reviews? They did not provide a service and want to keep $4200.00 for doing nothing. If they were flooded and had a real loss, trust me, I would not be posting on this site, I would be at their Ranch doing what I could to help, but this is not the case.

Typically when you let people know that you are going to take action by sending them a copy of the small claims court filing filled out (don't actually file it, just fill it out) with all of the fee's that they will incur if they lose they tend to think twice about keeping the money for services not rendered. People don't want more trouble than they need. I would let them know that they have 10 days to refund the money before you take action.

That was the advice from my lawyer when I had someone walk off with my money without ever providing any services. They gave me a full refund within 24 hrs since I could sue them for triple the amount. lol

Briggitte has it right, everything she said times 100.

It's wrong on so many levels. So take action!

I would contact local news. No one likes businesses that screw people out of money and use a tragedy for their gain. I think torrential rain should fall under an "act of god" and none of this was your doing. I'd definitely fight this for ALL the money back.

Ellis ranch is being so unprofessional about this refund for this wedding. Just the fact that the next day of the cancellation. Which would have been the wedding day was beautiful wx.they did not even contact the bride and groom personally. To offer an apology.or make any attempts to work with this couple. I was appalled to read on their FB page that a wedding was taking place the next day.just saying! Poor service! Greedy Ellis ranch! Shame on you

You deserve a full refund! What did they do to deserve Anything! GOOD LUCK....And Congratulations! !: )

I think they should refund everything down to the BASE PRICE I anything that required electricity and water. As in, only the use of the building. Regardless, from what I understand, some areas were aware of te potential flooding, therefore they could hae called IN ADVANCE, even just a few more days before(not THE day before), so that they could see what happened. If they were "high and dry" the next day, they should have called y'all in for an "emergency" wedding. Bc them holding a wedding the next day is ridiculous. The point being that they couldn't determine if the electricity grid would be shut down the next day, or an out of control vehicle took out a power line. They should have cancelled all events until the TRUE outcome was determined.

I'd definitely sue. You had people from another CONTINENT coming. If you hadn't pulled it together at the last minute, imagine the OVERALL financial loss-plane tickets, hotels, rental cars, etc. plus the amount you're out for the wedding itself.

My first husbands sister sued her caterer for serving cold food, 2 hours late, due to their building allegedly having a pipe burst. Guess what? A little investigating turned up that no pipe had busted, but that the manager hadn't shown up in time to get to work! For a $5400 catering bill, she got almost $12k...she recouped the cost of extending the hall rental, extending her dj hour and photog, an for guests down time while waiting for food. It was also supposed to be plated, and was brought in on warming tables.

I'd go file just to see what they do. Also, did they per chance hold a wedding the day before yours should have happened? As well, if you can find a way to truly determine whether they in fact did or did not have utilities, you've got a case. On that note, did you have your rehearsal there, possibly after y'all were warned about the impending weather?

This is why you purchase wedding insurance! I would personally be really angry especially if they had a wedding the next day. However when a venue has no running water available I think it is considered a health risk and liability for them to let you stay. (Sanitation) I know even at school if their running water wa down for longer than an hour they had to release all of the kids.

Yep I would contact local media and take them to small claims.

I hope you printed that fb post to show as proof of the lie. FB gets so many people in trouble. Showing that to a judge AND the media should give you some leverage! Good luck. Please let us know the outcome

I remember watching an episode of Four Weddings a while back. One of the brides had the misfortune of having her wedding day during the October snowstorm of...um...2011 (I think). The whole northeast was out of power -- many areas for days, if not weeks -- and it was a mess.

Her venue was without electricity, but generators and heaters were brought in, and the wedding took place. It was cold at the venue, and lots of people couldn't get there, but the bride and groom at least had the option of going forward. I'm not sure about the water situation. That would leave people without restroom facilities and servers with nothing more than hand sanitizer. This would probably be where a small claims judge would draw the line and say that having a wedding there would have been unsanitary and unsafe.

Wedding insurance. If you don't have it and you're spending a lot, buy it.

Yea ... I'm not sure that you could have had your wedding there without electricity or water. I believe where I am, there are all kinds of codes about restrooms, etc., not to mention that you probably would have had no ice without electricity.

Was the amount of money you paid the full amount? Or was it the 50% deposit or whatever?

I'm not saying I wouldn't be annoyed .. It stinks that they aren't being human beings about it. If I were the business owner I would probably give you as much back as I could because I would have felt awful about your wedding, but I am not sure how much liability they have.

By the way ... WAY TO GO in being flexible enough to have your wedding in your cul de sac! I think that is AWESOME!!

I may be wrong, but I'm rather certain that without running water/electricity (even if they weren't technically flooded), they wouldn't have been able to have people there. I know at work there've been a couple times when the office didn't have running water and employees weren't allowed in the building until running water was available.