‘Brutal’ email received by couples planning their wedding at Hidden Garden Estate with no idea if they’ll get a refund

Brodie Holmes
It’s been a bit stressful, but there’s been people around us on different forums helping out everyone, which has been a good thing. So it keeps the mind at peace a little bit.

Lucy Breaden
I’ve noticed that on social media, everyone’s kind of coming together because there are so many people that have been affected by this. Talk me through the email or the phone call you received over the weekend.

Brodie Holmes
Yeah, I went to work to continue to pay for some of the wedding and some of the expenses for myself and my partner. She called me with the sad news, quite upset, quite traumatic, and didn’t know what else to do and if we had to cancel the wedding or not. In regards to that, yeah, it’s been a stressful 48 hours since receiving that email.

Lucy Breaden
What did that email say?

Brodie Holmes
So it said that we had to drop our numbers down to at least 60 from our original number where we booked a package between 80 to 100 people and cancel some of our vendors for the day. So we were only allowed to have two, which made it very stressful to my partner, Samantha, due to the fact that her hair being done, that counts as a vendor. Photographer counts as a vendor. Food truck counts as a vendor. DJ, a vendor. It all seemed to add up. Cake even, getting that delivered, we couldn’t have.

Lucy Breaden
So you can only have two vendors on site?

Brodie Holmes
Two vendors on site.

Lucy Breaden
And whether that is someone just dropping something off, that counts as a vendor.

Brodie Holmes
Yes.

Lucy Breaden
Has this just thrown everything into disarray for you, Brodie?

Brodie Holmes
It has. It sure has. Trying to organise different ways to accommodate everything to a new venue once we get one. Trying to chase up people that we’ve invited.

Lucy Breaden
Because you need to try and drop the numbers down from 100ish to 60?

Brodie Holmes
Yeah, and it’s just not possible. Like, we’ve invited everyone to our special day and cutting people off that list, I wouldn’t want it for anyone to do. It’s just not right.

Lucy Breaden
So will you now be looking for a different ceremony location, a different reception location?

Brodie Holmes
Yeah, so it’s basically, because obviously everyone’s going to go through that short notice period, we’ve decided to have a separate ceremony and a separate reception just to be able to, obviously, it’s got the price of things these days, it helps that we split it up.

Lucy Breaden
All well and good, Brodie, to have a new place locked in, but do you know if you’re going to get money back?

Brodie Holmes
Don’t know yet. We’re obviously not being able to get a response from emails, phone calls, trying different platforms to get in contact with them. No one’s hearing nothing. It’s hard because there’s a lot of us out there that are chasing the refunds to help provide for our next location, but without hearing anything, it makes it 10 times harder.

Lucy Breaden
They say, well, they mentioned in their email that you can cancel and receive a full refund according to their cancellation policy. Do you have faith in that policy?

Brodie Holmes
Don’t even know what the cancellation policy is. We weren’t sent it. There was nothing in our contract in regards to when we signed for that amount of people in regards to a cancellation policy. They apparently have gone to their lawyers today, but that’s just word of mouth. It’s just very hard.

Lucy Breaden
So you’re worried you could lose some money here?

Brodie Holmes
Definitely. We definitely could feel like we could lose some money, something that I’ve spent time away from the kids to make sure I was able to work, to provide, to have our special day, the one that Samantha enjoys and wants, just to see it potentially go to waste and not being able to see a cent of it come back. It hurts a little.

Lucy Breaden
And you’ve just come from work. You’re in your high vis. You’re a hardworking bloke.

Brodie Holmes
Yeah. It’s like I’m just someone that wants the best for my partner, and there’s a lot of men out there that want the same. It’s what we do for our family. And just to see something like that happen to us, where all my partner wants is to have the same last name as our two kids. Just, yeah, brutal.