Venue price has decreased by £800 since booking

[Ekh1895]

We booked our wedding venue for July 2026 in February 2024 as we wanted to make sure we got our preferred date. At the time, the venue hadn't published 2026 prices so the venue came back with a hire price of £6200 for the day.

We've now just been made aware that their current 2025 price for our same day of the week at the same time of year is only £5400, and if we were to book now that the venue would offer us that price.

I get that the venue has tried to estimate a price when we booked in 2026, but the venue hire price has actually gone DOWN from £5900 in 2024 to £5400 in 2025, so it seems nonsensical that we're paying £6200 for 2026 all because we booked the venue early. If we were to cancel our current contract and lose our deposit and rebook, we would still be saving ourselves £300 which feels crazy!

Are we within our right to contact the venue and ask for either our venue hire to be brought in line with the current price or for them to honour the extra £800 we've been asked for in, for example, our drinks package?

We booked our wedding venue for July 2026 in February 2024 as we wanted to make sure we got our preferred date.

You didn't want to wait for the prices to come out. You bought and paid what I assume was an acceptable price at the time.

Can’t harm to ask them!

I suppose it's always a gamble when you book early. If the price has gone up you would have saved money. I suppose you could contact them and ask about the price

You can try... but you paid a premium for the guarantee to get your preferred date & day.
Maybe it's cheaper because most of the popular dates & day combinations are already sold out?

Fluid pricing, presumably they have discounted the 2025 date as it’s still available. Of course you can cancel if you only lose the deposit, but you may risk them not accepting your booking as you cancelled the original booking. Can you contact them and see if anything can be done on price, as clearly you don’t want to cancel, but don’t think the price is fair.

What happens if you cancel and they have someone waiting to book that date? You lose your deposit and your date. Unless they offered a price guarantee when you booked a year ago, you are unreasonable.

You are not unreasonable to ask, they are not unreasonable to say no.

There's no harm is asking op but I can't see they will change the price.
You took the risk to get the day you wanted.
If the price had went up would you be happy if they contacted you to say they wanted more money? I'm guessing not and would be quoting the contract you signed, but it's exactly the same senario.

How can they be charging someone £800 less to get married there on the day you're getting married there? Is there more than one wedding per day?

The venue has differential pricing. Our date is a Friday in July and for all of their Friday weddings May-September the price is £5400 for all 2025 dates and, if booked now, all 2026 dates.

So it's definitely not a case of a price decrease due to last minute booking as September 2026 is still a year and a half away and you can still book it now for £5400, opposed to the £6200 we paid 2 years ago.

No harm in asking if they'll give you a reduction- try for £800 but £300-£500 is fairer seeing as you'd only save £300 if you cancelled and rebooked

There's nothing lost by asking, most venues will at the least meet you halfway as they want happy customers at the end of the day. I'd be very surprised if they didn't offer you at least a partial discount nearer to current prices.

ah ok i get it. So it's not actually the same day

You can ask but they probably won't as a PP said their pricing is fluid as with all hotel bookings.

You paid for and got the date you want. I'd be happy with that to be honest.

Yeah seriously, if the price had gone up would you be asking them to increase your payment? Don’t think so. Venues are scraping by as it is - people aren’t going out because no one has any money. Electrics are so expensive they’re shutting down wherever you look. It’s got worse since last year so makes sense they’re desperate to get money through the door. If you want to kick up a fuss over something that has nothing to do with you, go for it.

honestly, if you bought a pair of jeans and then a year later there was a sale you wouldn’t go in to the shop demanding credit for the difference would you?

What does your contract say?

I think asking for a partial refund when you’ve already agreed and paid would be really tacky