Venue is increasing cost to postpone upcoming wedding

That doesn’t sound reasonable at all. Why will they not let you cancel? That is happening to many people but doesn’t make the practice ethical.

View Quoted Comment They said that they would have accepted to let us cancel early on at the start of the pandemic, but because they have resumed doing other people’s weddings (I am assuming for people who do not mind potentially starting a superspreader), now they won’t let us cancel

Yes, this is very common practice. If the venue is ABLE to host your wedding on your date, then the normal terms of your contract will prevail. So I would look at the contract you signed. Most likely it states that if you cancel your wedding, you will forfeit your deposit. As far as the up charge goes, that is pretty standard as well. Many venues increase their prices every year or every couple years. So if you are voluntarily postponing your wedding until next year, you will be charged next year’s prices. Many venues graciously allowed couples to reschedule without charging them the following year’s prices, but now that most states are opening up for events again, I’m sure that will likely not be the case any more.

This all boils down to what your contract says about postponements and cancellation. If the venue can hold up their end of the contract, I wouldn’t expect them to do anything outside of what’s written in that. It’s standard that postponements would be charged a different amount based on the next year’s rates.

Since you want to cancel or push it back and it’s not the venue that *has* to push it back, yes, it makes sense that you’re being charged fees for next year or additional fees. Now that venues are being allowed to hold weddings again, the venues are doing all they can to hold them. You could cancel and lose the money you’ve already paid and the money you’ve already agreed to pay, or you could postpone the wedding and pay more or you could down size your wedding and get married for the price you’d agree on now, it seems like those are your options.

Yes, this is common. This is one of the reasons why we didn’t postpone. If your venue is making up their own covid rules outside of state mandates as many venues have done then they cant do that, but if you want to postpone just because of covid then unfortunately you’d be responsible to pay to push out your date.

What does your contract say?

As others have said, read your contract. I am sure it says in there that prices are subject to change if you postpone your wedding and that if you cancel you will lose your deposit. They are able to hold up their end of the contract by hosting your wedding on the date you chose. Most venues are back to normal operation, with Covid precautions in mind.

Yep. My venue did that last year. I tried to postpone in May 2020 to summer 2021 but they wanted to treat it as a “new booking” and charge $$$. So instead I spent All summer stressed about our September 2020 wedding. In early August our venue told us we could postpone at no charge to 2021 due to restrictions in NY at the time (it was 50 person max, I think, and venue lost liquor license a few days later unbeknownst to us at the time).

View Quoted Comment I am sorry to hear 😥 - did you end up having your wedding there?

View Quoted Comment We didn’t have our small ceremony there. We ended up having a “micro wedding” at a local park with a few friends and family. We did postpone the big event to July 2021, so it’ll be a vow renewal at the venue, though, since they wouldn’t discuss cancelling unless that was 100% our decision. I’m sure it’ll be fun!

Most catering, resort and special occasions or hospitality jobs have suffered, but those employers who have kept them on without the income to pay the mini.u. staff have to get the money somewhere. And most companies only guarantee rates stay the same for a period of time or a season. Ordinarily , then they adjust them. Market costs for many things are higher than they were, they raise rates to get your goods and staff.

View Quoted Comment This is spot on. I don't think the venue is being unreasonable at all.