Wedding can't happen but I've heard nothing from my vendors

I would contact them about it. Vendors have a lot of client and it would be a ton of work for them to reach out to each person. It sounds like you are going to have no choice but to either postpone or cancel which you need to let your vendors know. Based on what others have been saying, I think your best option is going to be to postpone as most contracts are nonrefundable.

Keep following up with them to get a response and keep a paper trail (emails or write down the days/time you call and leave voicemail if they don’t answer). They are probably dealing with dozens of other couples in the same situation and could be overwhelmed. I think your method of keeping it respectful and open to alternatives is the best way to go. It’s actually better for them than having a panic-stricken bride bent on cancelling and getting refunded immediately.

Email each vendor ASAP. They're not going to take the initiative to postpone or cancel because that means losing money.


Also, stop paying that lawyer. Reviewing your contracts should be Step 1 before he gives you advice about your options.

If your lawyer didn’t review your contracts, his assessment is useless. The contracts you have with each of these vendors are what matter here. Also, vendors are dealing with dozens or maybe even hundreds (depending on the vendor) of brides trying to cancel/reschedule/rework their plans right now so I wouldn’t rely on them reaching out to you at all.

Contact your vendors ASAP if you want to reschedule. They’re probably busy rescheduling other brides. Pick another date before they all get booked.

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We purposefully picked small, local vendors so few of them have very many wedding obligations that are impacted by the current restrictions. I am sure there are weddings in June and July that have already postponed, but the wedding season around here generally starts in mid-May, leaving only a couple weeks of weddings that have been made officially illegal at this point.

I think you are right about not lucking out much with refunds though. We held out hoping our vendors would be willing to issue them if they had to outright cancel on us because of government restrictions, but now we've lost the window to do much about it. Our two most expensive vendors have "acts of god" clauses in their contracts and our other vendors that didn't have formal contracts only add up to about $1k worth of deposits total.

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Fortunately, I we picked all local vendors and small businesses so no one is pumping out couples and we are probably only one of a handful of couples at most that are actually legally being forced to cancel our wedding (I'm sure they have others who are postponing and rescheduling out of caution, but at this point the legal restrictions only go through the end of the month). I was just hoping I would hear from them this week, especially our venue who is also catering and providing lodging, so really can't do any of the things they were contracted to do.

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The lawyer was part of an employee benefits service. He literally spent 20 minutes telling us "well what I would do in this situation is postpone your wedding because I don't think you'll be able to have it" and we had to ask him a half dozen times point blank "if they cannot provide the contracted services due to an emergency order, is that different from us canceling" until he was like, "oh yes" but we asked him about the contracts and he kept saying "if I reviewed them" but never actually offered. Pretty useless and a waste of time for sure!

We WANT them tot take the initiative to postpone/cancel. Obviously they don't want to lose money, but we don't either. If they cannot legally do what they have been contracted to do, they have no other option as I see it.

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I've already discussed this with them and they have a ton of availability late next year and none during dates we want, so at this point we've missed the window anyway.

BTW, we know for a FACT that many of our vendors are not dealing with hundreds of other couples in our same situation. We are getting married locally, in our own state, and chose to work entirely with small, local businesses. Our venue/caterer for example only hosts one wedding per week for a wedding season that starts Memorial Day weekend and ends in mid-late October, so that's maybe 20 weddings/year. We were their first wedding of the year, and the current restrictions go through May 31st, so we are literally the ONLY wedding they have that is illegal at this point. I'm sure other couples have postponed and rescheduled, but we are the only ones being forced to at this point.

They wont contact you until the last minute unless you contact them. None of my vendors contacted me once shelter in place started (my wedding was supposed to take place 2weeks after). Literally none of my vendors cancelled on me except for the church aweek later after shelter in place started. My city didn’t issue a mandated order but issued a shelter in place recommendation and I wanted to know what is up w my reception venue. I wanted them to cancel on me and they told me we were “good to go” As long as the city officials agree to let us hold the wedding. I said Excuse me what?? So how many ppl can we have? A reception hall for 10ppl?? They told me they would have to ask and eventually they got back to me and told me if I cancel I lose my deposit.


Don’t expect ur vendors to cancel on you vs you cancel them. And when u do cancel don’t expect them to give you your deposits back, it’s likely that you will lose them. If I were you and you plan to postpone then I would reach out immediately to get alll vendors on board w a new date before they get booked up with postponing the events they already had booked with other ppl as well.

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Thanks for sharing your experiences, Monica. It is super helpful to hear about what happened to you.

At this point we've waited to long to get any priority dates from our vendors (our venue is entirely booked for next spring) so I will likely just reach out to them and see what is possible.

View Quoted Comment Yes. Honestly I had reached out to them even prior to my shelter in place for my city asking what will happen if my city gets shut down and we cant have the wedding. Most only offered to postpone & didn’t even try to address canceling. Some told me they had a cancellation fee and some said non refundable deposit. Once the city shutdown actually happened they didn’t follow up. They clearly know their own city where they live was under lockdown (some live near SF bay area where strict shutdowns started first) and knew that events of 10 or more were not allowed and they still didn’t reach out to tell me they cant do the wedding because of xyz.


Good luck to you! Glad My perspective was able to help.

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That's pretty much the exact same scenario here. They've generally been really good about communicating with us but since the extension was announced seven days ago... crickets! Our photographer, DJ, and event rentals company can't even operate their business legally, and our venue/caterer cannot provide us with accommodations or food indoors or host more than 10 people. They obviously know that.

I pretty much know they won't refund us if they don't have to and I imagine the cost of legal fees would pretty much just end with us getting very little if anything bad and just having bad blood with all of these vendors we have already built a good relationship with. We purposely picked small local vendors, so it's not like we really want to pull money away from them, we just don't want to spend the same amount of money we planned on an event that isn't what/when we wanted. I just feel like I'm not all that excited about it anymore, so postponing the event more than a year just feels like a waste of money and I wish we never planned the event we did in the first place. We should have made the call to cancel earlier but my FH wanted to wait until the last minute and now all of the reasonable back-up dates that would have worked for us are taken. So if we reschedule I have to choose a time of year when I know a bunch of guests won't come because of work schedules. I just don't see the point anymore.

View Quoted Comment Yea it really sucks and takes away the excitement That’s exactly how my FH felt he wanted to cancel and get our money back he was soooo over it and at the time we got into a huge fight w his parents which made everything 10x worse. We are planning on eloping before October which gives us something to look forward to. We were planning to go on a mini trip for our anniversary in June since our honeymoon got cancelled but not sure a trip to vegas so soon is a smart idea.


Try to have small things to look forward to. So Were your backup dates all within 2020 or dates for 2021 are also not available? Why would your guests not be able to attend?

Hello, I'm a June bride in your exact situation. The restrictions in our county have not been lifted so the venue and vendors cannot provide services as contracted. We just reached out to our vendor to formally request a redunds and we are awaiting a response. We dont not want to reschedule for various personal reasons. Do you have an update on your situation?

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We ending up just reaching out to everyone and rescheduling. We knew our biggest two contracts had "acts of god" clauses, so it would have been likely that either 1) we couldn't get a refund for our deposit anyway because a pandemic would have fit under that clause, and 2) if they were going to fight us the cost of litigation would have ate into our refund. The other vendors we paid for all had deposits of less than $350 so again any lawyer fees would have made fighting for a few hundred dollars worthless. We exclusively hired local small businesses so we know they are are struggling too - if we had paid a lot of money to some big hotel chain so an executive could drive a fancy car then maybe I would have cared more getting money back.

We had a medical issue in our family so are going to do a small ceremony on our original date and our venue (also our caterer) has been amazing and it letting us kind of "go rogue" on their property and use all the outdoor spaces at no charge for our 10 person minimony - she even offered to do a cake or food for us if we want. We are going to be able to use our outdoor ceremony site and still have a nice mini-event, and then next year we can hopefully repeat with a larger group. All of our vendors applied our deposits towards a future date and are honoring our original fees, so even though it isn't exactly how we planned we're pretty happy about getting to move everything forward. If for whatever reason we decide not to go ahead with the new date, we can forfeit our deposits then, but for us it made sense to reschedule and at least hold a date as an option, rather than just give up the money now. I didn't want to argue with all of our vendors because we really liked everyone and to us it just wasn't worth it. We pretty much are viewing all of the money we have already spent as being paid and gone at this point.