Our wedding venue wants half the price after we cancel. Is it worth asking for a breakdown?
Weddings"It's in the contract, so there's nothing to discuss," the venue manager wrote. We're cancelling our large reception in England and planning a much smaller celebration.
The booking was £6,000, with a £1,500 deposit paid. The venue says the cancellation charge is £3,000 in total, including that deposit, so it wants another £1,500. The wedding date is ten months away. We changed our plans; the venue hasn't cancelled on us.
My partner wants to pay and stop thinking about it. I accept that holding our date may have cost the business money. I don't understand how it reached the figure, especially after the manager said the charge would stay the same even if the date was booked by somebody else.
The [Competition and Markets Authority's consumer guidance](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cancelling-goods-or-services-guide-for-consumers/cancelling-goods-or-services) says a cancellation charge isn't fair merely because it appears in a signed contract, and suggests asking how it was calculated. That doesn't tell us what the answer is for our booking.
Would you make one written request for that calculation before deciding what to do next? I want to question the amount without pretending cancellation should cost us nothing.