Today I wanted to share with you my thoughts on our original wedding venue. Brock House Restaurant specializes in weddings and events at the historic venue located in the Point Grey / Jericho area of Vancouver. The venue is super popular for summer weddings because there is a gorgeous tent that is decked out with string lights and chandeliers, as well as a backdrop that faces the ocean and the mountains of Vancouver.
Brock House is a beautiful venue, and it was always my dream to get married there. I felt incredibly lucky to be able to book with the space, because the tent, the lawn, the mountain and water view, and all of the trees, make Brock House an idyllic location for any fairytale wedding. We’ve also been to Brock House for a wedding in the past. The food was also delicious, and service was good.
We were a “pandemic couple” who were originally scheduled to get married at Brock House in May 2020. The things I experienced as a pandemic bride with Brock House Restaurant managing our booking was really problematic, from my point of view. For reference, we had planning for 90 guests on our original wedding date, and our event was originally planned for a Saturday evening.
To start, I want to say that we had a very positive experience working with Kaityn, the restaurant’s venue coordinator at the time we signed our contract. She was very responsive and helpful whenever we had any questions. Unfortunately, Kaitlyn left less than a year after we initially booked with Brock House Restaurant, and we started working with Emily. Emily was pleasant, not as responsive or helpful as Kaitlyn, but still it was relatively positive. Not long after Kaitlyn left, Emily also left, so 3 months before our wedding, we were working with a completely new team at Brock House Restaurant with completely new contacts. This is when things started going sideways, especially since COVID had started to spread in Asia and then slowly to the rest of the world.
As a human being and member of the Vancouver community, I completely understand that businesses have gone through a lot during COVID. I made it a goal of mine to help promote small local businesses to my network, and I was extremely lucky to have most of my vendors be flexible with us when we were trying to work around the COVID restrictions. I supported all of them by referring new clients to them, ordering things from them outside of our wedding contract, and generally supporting them whenever I can.
1. Lack of empathy
COVID became a full blown pandemic around the world in March, but starting in January, it was already an epidemic in China. The majority of my family (about 30% of our guests) would be flying in from China. Because of the epidemic there and the shut down of flights between China and Vancouver, and the fact that people actually were not allowed to leave the cities there due to the strict lockdown, I contacted Brock House Restaurant to let them know the situation and to ask if there would be any flexibility in adjusting the contracted minimum spend as stipulated on our contract. Our intention was to work with them to find a middle ground as we still wanted to get married there (despite my family not being able to attend), in the hopes that our wedding could still go ahead as mostly planned.
Brock House Restaurant’s response showed an utter lack of empathy and awareness of current events. Here is what they said, verbatim:
I understand your guests concern with COVID-19. I’m very sorry that this has resulted in over 30% of your guests declining to fly due to the higher risk of being in close quarters with others. If there is a world-wide travel ban, we will definitely look into making adjustments when necessary but as of now, we are unable to change the minimum food and beverage spend that is in your contract.
I explained that it wasn’t due to the fear of flying that prevented them from coming to Canada, but actually the fact that China was under lock down and there were no flights in between Canada and China. Later, the catering manager called us to say that if we don’t have enough guests, then we can just add more items from their menu to try to meet that minimum spend.
Because the BC government put a ban on events over 50 people pretty soon after that, we were able to postpone our wedding to May 2021, but then came the next issue.
I also wanted to clarify that we were appreciative that they allowed us to postpone our wedding, but I also wanted to bring up that during this time (March to June, 2020), most businesses were closed in BC and Canada, including event venues, stores, restaurants, and other non-essential businesses, so even while events under 50 people were technically allowed, COVID was starting to spread quickly through Vancouver so no one was hosting events or even really seeing people.
2. Lack of transparency
We were told that if we wanted to reschedule our wedding to 2021, we would have to pay the 2021 rental rates and minimum spend requirements. There was about a $2000 increase between the 2020 rate and the 2021 rate. Because we had posted in a local Facebook wedding group asking about other couples’ experiences with Brock House Restaurant, the Catering Manager also e-mailed us to say that we were badmouthing them on social media and they would have to reconsider if they could host our wedding at all. We were especially stressed because we had planned our entire wedding with Brock House Restaurant, it was still my dream venue, and at that point we wanted to work with them to find a middle ground.
Then they told us if we wanted to reschedule, we had to move quickly because a lot of couples were already moving their dates to 2021 and there weren’t that many dates left. Under the pressure, we signed a new date and contract for 2021, with the new increased pricing, assuming they probably ask all of the other couples to do this as well.
During my planning process, I had met a few other Brock House Restaurant brides from the local Facebook wedding groups, and after signing my rescheduled contract with them, I was told by another bride that what they said about the limited dates weren’t necessarily true, and that they were offered by Brock House Restaurant to port their entire contract over from 2020 to 2021 without any changes or increases in rates. I was completely shocked.
I contacted Brock House Restaurant immediately after and asked about it, and they said that what they discuss with other couples is confidential and they would not be able to comment on the details of the other couples’ contract. We had already signed our 2021 contract with them and they were refusing to budge. They offered to reduce our per person minimum spend to the 2020 rate, but the overall minimum spend for the whole event was still $1000 higher than the 2020 rate (not including the increase in rent), so that didn’t really help us since we had a low wedding guest count to begin with.
3. Lack of flexibility
Our contract stipulated that we had to pay them the rental fee upfront as a deposit when we sign the contract, and then 50% of the food and beverage minimum spend six months before the event date. As our original date was in May 2020, prior to changing our date to 2021, in December 2019, we had already paid them over $10,000 as part of that contract clause.
Come December 2020, because of the increase in the rental fee and food and beverage minimum spend, we were asked to pay another $2,500 in deposits. At this time, we reached out to Brock House Restaurant to ask 1) what are our options if the government’s health orders and event restrictions are still not lifted by our wedding date, for example can we discuss lowering our minimum spend or potentially postponing, and 2) because we’re not even sure if our event can go ahead as planned, is there any chance for us to not pay the additional deposit because they’ve already had over $10,000 of our deposits in their bank account for over a year at this point.
In addition, several of our friends have had their wedding vendors go bankrupt and not being able to recover any of their deposits. We were really worried about the risk of Brock House Restaurant going under and then keeping all of our money. With the exception of the initial deposit which was paid via credit card in January 2019, the majority of it was actually paid in Interac e-transfer, so there was no way of getting our money back if anything were to happen to Brock House Restaurant. The credit card protection is also only available for a limited time after the charge is put through.
Brock House Restaurant responded saying that they are expecting all events to go ahead as planned with all of the restrictions lifted, and that we are also contractually obligated to pay them that additional $2,500, otherwise we would essentially be forfeiting our entire contract and all of our previous deposits. I asked what if there are restrictions due to the health order, and they said we will have to wait to see how things go and they might be open to lowering the minimum spend depending on the situation and the amount of our minimum spend.
I reached out to a few of the Brock House Restaurant brides that I met in the Facebook group, some of whom did end up getting married in the summer 2020 with the reduced number of people, and I was told by them that Brock House Restaurant refused to lower their minimum spend, so they just ended up throwing money at it in order to meet the minimum spend amount, even though they were legally capped at the number of people who could attend.
With our minimum spend capped at 50 people, we would have needed to spend nearly $300 per person, which is completely unreasonable to me. Brock House Restaurant also won’t allow food to be removed off the premises for health and safety reasons, so we would essentially be paying for food that would be thrown out, which is a whole other issue.
In the end, the health order restrictions for events over 10 people but under people weren’t lifted until July 1, 2021 (two months after our scheduled wedding date). Larger events of over 50 people weren’t allowed until September 2021. As such, Brock House Restaurant’s strategy of “wait and see” was really detrimental to most couples who are just trying to figure out what their plans would be.
Conclusion
Brock House was my dream venue for a really long time, ever since we attended a friend’s wedding there a few years ago. I was so excited to book them as our venue, as I couldn’t believe that I would be lucky enough to get married there. We had read some of the negative reviews prior to booking, but no one thinks that these things will happen to you, until they do.
When I was dealing with all of the things above, I would actually have nightmares at night, and it gave me so much anxiety and depression that I had to seek professional counselling to help with the mental health issues stemming from this.
Your wedding should be a happy time, and you should enjoy the process of planning it. Unfortunately working with Brock House Restaurant was the exact opposite. I would strongly suggest people think twice before booking Brock House Restaurant. If you still decide to book this venue, then you should at least be prepared to deal with some of these issues.
*Maddy Loves 