What to do? Wedding fully payed since 2020, and venue refuses to give us back our money.

Sounds like your venue has bigger problems then they are worth. They are likely in over their heads in debt with everything going on with covid. And im sure you are not the only people they have taken extra money from. Just hope that over the course of the year they dont end up bankrupt. You wont get your money or the wedding.

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I understand your frustration but that's not how breach of contracts work. It's not the venue purposely trying to screw you by eliminating 4 hours from operation, it's the government putting restrictions on them. If they say "hey, you can come in 4 hours earlier to make up for it" and you decide not to, the court will side with them. There's precedence of vendors willing court cases based on this.

And I agree with you. Caving into paying a full balance on a contract that may or may not be executed was not a good idea. Anyone whose venues are forcing them to pay in full for 100+ guests to reserve a date for future years should be very weary.

View quoted message The lesson is to not let yourself get manipulated. I was asked to pay the balance to guarantee a wedding date in 2021 or I would loose my money.
What if the venue has to close at 10 pm and stop serving alcohol at 9 pm. When we chose the venue and signed the contrat we had the venue between 2 pm and 2 am and bar until 1h30 am. I am paying the same price for 4 hours less. That should count as a breach of contract.

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While it sucks that your venue is not communicating to your standards, they are right that you don't have much to stand on legally. You didn't pay your venue for the DJ. You didn't pay your venue for the band. You didn't pay your venue for the for how loud you can have the music. That's outside their purview. You pay the venue to have their space and the staff to run their space for you. You not being able to dance or having a served plated meal instead of a buffet doesn't change the fact that the venue is capable of providing a service to you that meets the legal requirements of the contract. There is precedent set in Canadian courts that couples who choose to cancel their wedding despite being legally able to hold one won't get their money back.

What they can't do is eat your 100+ people's worth of services and only provide for less than that. That's where you have grounds for a refund but it can't happen until after the fact.

I guess let this be a lesson out there: don't fully pay for a contract that far in advance.

View quoted message What if I don't want to have to change my entire wedding .. even if the venue can have my wedding but it means loosing half of our guest, loosing our buffet, our dj, our band ..sitting down to eat, no party, no music is Not what we want or payed for. If they cannot provide us with what we want, what is the worth of our contract? Our contrat does not have a force majeur clause, it says that all deposits are non-refundable. The owner is telling me that she is keeping the entire money until after our wedding day. We are supposed to wait last minute to see if we can have the wedding we want? We all know a wedding is not something you plan 2 weeks in advance. She is telling me that if she can make my wedding on the planned day, she keeps the money. It is completely unreasonable to think like that. This experience with this owner has been a complete nightmare and she is using us as she wants because she has all of the money already. And she also told us that she no longer has our money at the moment so to stop asking for it. I wish I could show everybody these emails she sent me and help others not make the same mistake with this venue.

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Does your contract have a force majeure clause? "Can't get married" will carry different weight depending on what your contract actually says. Considering we are starting to re-open in parts of the province next week, there is a very high likelihood that you can get married in June unless Ford initiates another lockdown or stay at home order in the summer. You may have restrictions on guest counts and how to go about dinner service. You may have to wear masks. You may not be allowed to dance. But as far as the venue is concerned, you can still have a wedding.

What you can likely fight to get back is the difference between how many you paid for and how many actually attend. How easy this is will depend on how nice the venue is. What they can't do is arbitrarily swallow your money for services meant for 100+ people and only give you services that is 25 people's worth.

View quoted message Hi, I know we are in an unusual situation because we were asked to pay the full amount before our wedding and we did. Our venue is in Ontario.
At what point, those the venue have to give our money back? If we can't get married again this year, can they force us to postpone again keeping our money yet again for another year...I mean we could of made money with all that money in 2 years. I don't like that they are sitting on our savings for over 2 years now and telling me that they are not giving it back.

Without knowing what your contract states and further details of your situation, it's hard to provide any advice. Usually final payments are due the week of the wedding though so I'm surprised things were fully paid off when you postponed.

FYI in case you're unaware, you're posting in the Ontario section but you're in Quebec.