Venue deposits

I just wanted to add that there should be instances in which your deposit is refundable, and you should make sure these are spelled out in your contract. If they are not, have the venue amend the contract to reflect that.

View Quoted Comment I went with Venmo because I couldn’t drop off a check for two days and my two preferred dates got booked up in literally 30 hours!

Have you met with these people yet?

View Quoted Comment As long as the Paypal payment is sent as a business transaction (not friends/family) there are protections to get your money back. I paid one vendor by Cashapp. I know they prefer it bc they don’t have to pay credit card fees or the Paypal processing fees but I’d only do that if you trust the vendor.

Our venue required 500 which we get back if there is no damages to the venue

View Quoted Comment That’s how I felt about it too ! Like I get it if it’s a family owned business but even still .. it’s a business , why would they request a zelle payment

View Quoted Comment How did they ask for payment if you don’t mind me asking ? Our venue is requesting a zelle transfer .

View Quoted Comment They asked for a cashiers check. My other vendors wanted a check or payment through square space, my officiant wanted to be paid through Venmo.

We had to put the same amount of money 💵 for our venue to secure the date we gave them a cashiers check. I think almost all venue ask for a high deposit .

We paid a 30% deposit on the estimate. Next payment will be 6 months of a certain percentage. The final payment is after the final head count. So essentially we are prepaying but our estimate will have gone way down based on the amount of declines. I made sure she had the correct estimate of guests for the start so that first 30% deposit wasn't so overboard although still was a whopping $6,000+. We also paid via check cuz of the credit card service fee. Our other vendors may not charge said credit card fee so when it comes down to it we can pay those off with credit card, but not really wanting to do that with the venue. I would be weirded out if they asked for a zelle payment. I would ask them if there is any other payment form, unless you are comfortable with doing that.

We have an all inclusive venue, and we had to put down a $500 payment before signing the contract, then another $3,000 payment within 7 days. As other PPs have mentioned, check credit card rates! Ours has a 3% fee so it’s been sending in monthly checks to pay off the balance for us!

I’m very sure (we signed the contract in July, lol) that we had to put down 50% (check was fine) when we signed the contract to hold the date and then 50% either six months later or six months before the wedding (so either end of January or the end of March). My parents are, very sweetly, paying for the venue, so I don’t really remember the terms. It is non-refundable, unless they are able to fill your date. We get the venue Thursday at noon through Sunday at 1, so if we cancel and they can’t fill it, they lose a lot.

Yes, that is super common. To me, that is the whole point of a deposit is to assure you won't cancel a date they could book someone else. Our deposit was $5,000 and was nonrefundable.

View Quoted Comment The deposit not being refundable wasn’t what I was concerned about really .. it was more so the fact that they wanted us to zelle them . But I was able to get the venue coordinator to do a sit down so we can discuss the contract and make the deposit at that time 💜

View Quoted Comment Wow ! That’s a huge loss if anything happened ! Good luck on your venue darling !

View Quoted Comment Wow ! Yeah I think they wanted us to do same .. as far as sending in the money before the contract but I’m just so sketchy about stuff like that . More so because all our communication has been by email besides the one tour we had of the venue . I was able to set up another sit down with them to discuss the contract and then make a deposit ! Wish you the best !

View Quoted Comment Yeah girl that’s how I felt too ! I was just kinda on the fence about sending $1500 through zelle without even reviewing any contract first . I work for a bank , their claims dept . So I see these types of transfers happen all the time and there’s usually less than a 50% chance that the client ever gets the money back

View Quoted Comment Yeah the deposit I’m ok with , it was the zelle transfer they were asking for without even speaking about a contract . She did say the deposit would secure the date as well as put a down payment to secure the vendors too

I’m not sure about Zelle but My Bank promotes that.I had received a message from my bank a while back giving me information on Zelle but I never used it.

View Quoted Comment We met them ONCE . That was last week while my fiancé was here on leave . She’s in the army so she had to go back to Hawaii but I wanted her to at least be able to see the venue with me . All other communication has been through email ☹️