Your wedding venue shut down? What can you do?

Yesterday I wrote about the two wedding venues that left several wedding customers stranded when they suddenly shut down and took their clients money.

Today I found out that other wedding vendors offered them a last minute solution for the wedding and that they will be able to have their wedding ceremony and reception on their desired date. That's great to hear since it's otherwise almost impossible to secure a wedding venue with such a short notice. Most popular wedding venues in Fort Worth and Dallas sell out a year or more in advance.

Now the victims need to figure out how to get their money back! Following are a few suggestions of what they can do to get their money back:

1. Read the contract again and hunt down the owner of the venue and ask for your money back, keep all your conversations on file.

2. File a complain at the Attorney General, (you might want to file with the BBB, but that won't really help you much).

3. Dispute the credit card charge if you paid with a credit card within 60 days.

4. If you did not pay with a credit card or it's past the 60 days, I recommend you to get help and file a complain under The Truth in Lending Act.

5. Last but not least, take legal action, you can file with the small claims court, unfortunately it might take a long time before you get a court hearing and the business might not have any money for all the claims, but it might be your last and only solution.

Hopefully they will succeed in getting back most of their money.

Another good advice for any one in the process of securing a wedding vendor in Dallas or elsewhere is to never pay more than a small down payment to secure the date and to not pay the balance more than 60 days in advance. Most wedding vendors usually do not require you to pay the balance earlier than 2-6 weeks before the wedding date, so in this case you can dispute the charge if you pay with a credit card in the unfortunate case that the wedding vendor folds.

Good luck to all Dallas brides and wedding clients and make sure that you take the right precautions against unscrupulous wedding vendors.

Posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2012 at 12:44 pm. Filed under: Dallas and Fort Worth, Weddings Tags: dallas brides, dallas wedding vendor, dallas wedding vendors, dallas wedding venue, fort worth wedding vendor, wedding venues in dallas, wedding venues in fort worth RSS 2.0 feed.