BEWARE!!! Hacienda Del Mar Contract

amynel2 · March 27, 2009

After a lot of research we finally chose the Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar as the site for our wedding and reception. My mother is travel agent and has been handling the negotiations with Vivianna and generally had a positive feeling about her. When she emailed my mother the contract yesterday, my mom was floored! She told me that she had never seen a contract that restrictive in her 25 years in the business and doing destination weddings. Mom said the penalities for cancellations were so outrageous that it scared her. We're not getting married until June 2010 and the contract stated that we would penalized 100% of the cost of the wedding if we were to cancel at any point after the day the signed contract was returned. We also told her that we were expecting around 60 guests so that was also included in the contract but if we ended up with less guests we'd still be charged for the 60-even this far out!

My mom called Vivianna and voiced her concerns. Immediately-she took and or changed almost every penalty clause. We lowered our number of guests and rooms blocked to the minimum just to be safe. Vivanna didn't hestitate to make changes to the contract which leads me to believe the Sheraton hopes to slip something by signees in the hopes they won't know any better.

SO! My advice to you is to have someone in the industry look over the contract before you sign to make sure you are not putting yourself in the position pay huge amounts of money when you don't have to.

lgarner83 · March 27, 2009

Thanks goodness you're Mom took such a close look at it! I wouldn't sign that either! Thanks for the heads up for future brides

TammyB · March 27, 2009

Well it's a good thing it all worked out in the end. I was married there and it was prefect, the grounds are so pretty and it was everything I was looking for, for our wedding. Best of luck to you and congrats on your upcoming wedding.

Soon To Be Mrs. Gomez · March 27, 2009

I'm glad everything is good now. Lucky your mom is on top of things.

TammyWright · March 29, 2009

its really a good thing you had your mother looking over the contract for you...that is one of the reasons using a TA is for your benefit. we know what is standard for contracts and what is outrageous.