Wedding Deposit for Venue - Refundable or no?

I agree with Hank, it depends on the venue. Ours is offering a refund but the % we get back is based on when we cancel ie: over 1 year in advance 100%, 6 months in advance 40%

Most deposits are non refundable. Most contracts states where or not youre abke to get your money back.
For us weve had to rebook twice because of covid. All of our deposits are non refundable. But we were able to switch to different dates if needs but not cancel all together or else we would lose the money.

I just reviewed my contract, and while I paid for the total cost up front, it does look like a portion of that is non-refundable. However, I believe alot of venues are offering rescheduling of the event so that you don't lose out on the monies spent. As well, some will allow transferring of your contract to another party.

View quoted message Thanks, Liberty!

View quoted message Got it, thank you so much, Hank!

Typically they are non refundable. Hank made a lot of good points. We got lucky and found a venue that has a refundable deposit up to 2 weeks before the event. But it's a small local community hall

It varies from venue to venue in combination with other factors. But yes, typically deposits are non-refundable. It would be a real jerk move to hold a date so that a business cannot sell it to someone else, and then leaving them in a position where potential revenue is lost if you choose to backtrack for whatever reason.

If what you're concerned about are external factors that prevent venues from providing their services, that falls under a force majeure and are separate from any payment schedule clauses. But a force majeure is not a blanket clause that allows a client to pull out whenever they want as it needs to be proven that a business absolutely cannot provide the service period for it to take effect. Examples of this is, the venue was flooded or weather conditions make it impossible to host the event safely. An example where it won't apply is if you wanted maskless dancing at your wedding but government regulations make it so the venue has to enforce masking - you're not entitled to a refund just because you can't have maskless dancing.