Today, we were supposed to be married. But our wedding venue cancelled on us 4 days ago. The reason? They tried to raise the price by 37% last-minute and got defensive after we didn’t just roll over and accept – as we’d been doing through 5 months of their shenanigans.
We’re still hurting and in shock, but we’d like to share our story as a warning to all couples looking to tie the knot. Because unethical businesses exist and you deserve to know. Hopefully, you’ll be able to protect yourselves better.
So why did we pick this venue to begin with? We’d looked at a variety of spaces, mostly established hotels, but ultimately picked this cafe for sentimental reasons. It’d have been a somewhat unconventional choice of venue, but the fiancee and I had one of our first (and many subsequent) dates there 2+ years ago, so it held a lot of meaning for us. We also liked the food (European fare) and knew the waiting staff, so we felt comfortable in this familiarity. But while we might have been familiar with the waiting staff, we’d never met the owner, and his priorities were far more selfish. This brings us to
𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐎𝐍 #𝟏: 𝐓𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐚 𝐰𝐞𝐝𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧.
It can be easy to romanticize your own wedding. But to a business, the harsh truth is that your big day is ultimately a money-making opportunity. While there are many wonderful people in the industry who genuinely want to celebrate with you by supporting you with their services, this is often secondary to their business objectives. And this is usually fine. Unless their business objectives are at your expense.
The cafe we picked was owned by Bob (not his real name). From the very beginning, we had doubts over Bob. The first time we were supposed to meet, he stood us up. He kept the fiancee and me waiting at the cafe for more than 2 hours, ignoring our WhatsApp messages and calls. We eventually paid and left. When we later met Bob, we recognised him as having been present the whole 2 hours we were there – he just never bothered to come over!
Bob also wouldn’t remember our event date or timing; he mistook our lunchtime reception for a dinner just one week from the wedding. He ignored most of our WhatsApp messages, and even had the gall to scold us when we tried to confirm a meeting with him after his no-show. So it was quite in character when he finally came to us less than a week before our big day, declaring that we’d need to pay 37% more.
Maybe we looked like easy prey. Just a week before that, he set us back several hundred dollars in equipment rental after backtracking on earlier promises. During our discussions, we were repeatedly assured that we’d be able to use the venue’s projector and screen, as well as their AV system and mics. But when we went down to actually test the equipment 2 weeks before the wedding, we discovered: (1) we couldn’t use their sound system with the projector due to compatibility issues, meaning that none of our videos would’ve had sound, (2) the projector wasn’t powerful enough to beam anything onto the screen during daytime, and (3) there were no mics.
At this point, you must be wondering why we stuck with Bob despite his unprofessionalism. We make no excuses. It really just is terribly hard to abandon something when you want it so much, especially when it’s almost within reach. And so we downplayed all of the red flags, even when things began looking like an impossible game of Minesweeper.
𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐎𝐍 #𝟐: 𝐏𝐚𝐲 𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐝𝐲𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐝𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.
One of the first big red flags we missed was a strange tension between Bob and his staff. We only began noticing this around two months before the wedding, after one of his team quit abruptly. We initially paid this little attention, not wanting to involve ourselves in their internal politics. But in hindsight, this should have been a major warning sign that all was not right. Teamwork makes the dream work, after all, and if the people supporting you aren’t 100% focused, you risk things slipping through cracks.
For us, their internal issues had the knock-on effect of us having to have separate meetings with the cafe staff. Since they had issues communicating and sharing information with each other, we also had to repeat ourselves and verify each time that our previous discussions were valid. Super inefficient and frustrating.
To compensate for their lack of teamwork, we had to do the cafe’s work for them. For instance, because they couldn’t provide us with a floor plan, we had to manage the positioning of all of the tables, physically going down to count their furniture and measuring the space with a tape measure to ensure the setup adhered to COVID-19 regulations. We also needed to assign one of our guests to be a Food I/C – to ensure that everybody got their food on the day – which should have been the role of the restaurant manager!
Since they were hardly involved in the wedding preparation, it was easy for them to cancel on us. After all, it was us who had the most to lose, having done most of the work. That said, our saving grace in this whole ordeal was
𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐎𝐍 #𝟑: 𝐀𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥.
You never want to be caught in a “he said, she said” type of a situation. Following our venue’s cancellation, we went back to our WhatsApp chat logs and email inboxes, and are so thankful that we left written records of our discussions. This meant that when Bob tried to gaslight us by claiming we’d never confirmed that we wanted to host our wedding at his cafe, we had plenty of written examples to fall back on. Also, if we do take our case to the State Courts, for instance, we’ll have more than just our words to support our case.
One thing we could have done better was to have chased harder on the down payment. While we’d gotten and accepted the quotation way back last August, we were brushed off every time we asked about whether we needed to make a down payment. This made it easier for Bob to cancel on us because he believed that we needed a signed contract to hold an agreement up in court. Fun fact, a text message or email can be binding enough as long as the parties involved agree to the terms.
Besides being a factor in dispute resolution, it’s good practice to share an agenda/discussion topics before every meeting, and to share a recap and next steps after. Any venue or wedding partner worth their salt should do this. However, ours didn’t, and we had to pick up the slack for them. Looking back, we’re relieved we did. Now, we have one source of truth and one that we can share with you.
In closing, we’d like to extend our deepest appreciation to our family and friends. While this entire experience has been immeasurably painful, our heart cockles are warmed to know that we’re surrounded by wonderful human beings.
To our vendor partners, our sincerest apologies for having to cancel on you. We are touched by how understanding you have been and we cannot wait to pick up from where we left off once we get our wedding plans back on track.
And yes, it will not be long before we once more attempt to #MakeMarryWithMars with you. But for now, we plan to take some time to rest and recharge. Here’s to a better rest of the year.
Summary by Netizens:
Summary:
-Sibeh a lot of red flags along the way.
-Couple still played along, believing that end result might not be so bad la.
-Straw that broke the camel’s back was price increase.
So now blame everything on owner/cafe mgt when they themselves rolled over like dogs?
You are forced to physically measure the venue yourself and count furniture, not big enough of a warning sign meh? Pity that backbone transplants are not a thing.
Sounds like user problem leh.
Please feel free to criticize should you feel the summary is not fair.
