Couples who planned weddings at ReBar consider lawsuit for lost deposits
Preparing the details for one’s wedding—a monumental milestone in the lives of many couples—is as tedious and cumbersome as it is exciting. Couples create back-up plans for the inclement weather, but what about when the wedding venue itself closes without notice? A number of New York couples are scrambling to find an alternate venue to host their weddings after the unexpected closing of popular Brooklyn venue reBar last week.
“A coworker told my fiancée that reBar had closed…and my first thought was ‘well, they’ll be open tomorrow.’ It just didn’t make any sense…neither of us could process the information,” Marcus Soutra and his fiancée Amber Bergeron told the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
With reBar’s sudden closure, couples like Soutra and Bergeron have lost their initial deposit and, in the case of weddings scheduled in the next few weeks, their complete wedding venue payment. The cost of a Saturday wedding at reBar was $25,000 with a required 50 percent deposit to secure the date. “Our reBar wedding cost $25,000,” said Soutra. “We put down $12,500 in August 2013 and have been paying $1,000 a month since.” Soutra, COO of a mentoring agency for children with learning disabilities and Bergeron, a teacher at a Manhattan high school, are still reeling from the shock and simultaneously searching for alternative venues.
“After the initial punched-in-the-gut feeling, we immediately began juggling the pieces—calling our credit card company, other venues. We attacked the situation from all angles,” said Bergeron. “We’re still in that process, so it’s almost like we haven’t felt the full impact.”