As you are aware, it is important that you read all the “fine print” before signing any contract.  This is especially true with venue contracts – there are a lot of items that have the potential to turn your wedding into something substantially less than you expected.

One of my least favorite clauses, and it exists in virtually all hotel contracts, is the right to reassign function rooms.  It looks something like this:  “Hotel reserves the right to reassign function rooms to accommodate both group (your wedding) and all other groups or parties using hotel’s facilities during group’s meeting.”

What’s this about?  Hotels are in the business of selling rooms, and groups fill rooms.  Imagine you have booked your wedding in the “Ocean Ballroom.”  A few months later the hotel has an opportunity to book a large sales meeting that will generate a lot of revenue.  The catch:  the group needs the Ocean Ballroom for their opening night dinner, scheduled on the same night as your wedding.  You will get a call from the hotel’s general manager, contrite and apologetic, but he will tell you in no uncertain terms that they have moved your wedding to River Room Sections 1 and 2.  I have seen it happen.

It is absolutely critical that you scratch the reassignment clause.  Just take a sharpie and cross it out.  Here are some likely scenarios:

• The hotel will tell you that they cannot modify the contract.  Tell them you can’t sign it (if you have been working with a Catering Manager, you may need to escalate this to the Director of Catering or Sales.)
• The hotel will tell you not to worry, there is no other room that could accommodate you.  Until you find out that hotel’s fine dining restaurant, which never did well, is being converted to “River Room 1 & 2.”
• Your Catering Sales Manager will give you his personal promise that you will have the Ocean Ballroom, he will be there for you.  Maybe he will, but the turnover rate in the hotel business is very high, chances are high that the person who sold you the hotel won’t be there by the time of your wedding.  And even if he is, he won’t be able to stop the sales meeting juggernaut.

So simply do not sign a contract with this clause.

Note: sometimes it is easier to modify a contract clause than to strike it.  I have occasionally let the reassignment clause stay with a “subject to client’s approval” modifier.

A corollary:  as previously mentioned, turnover in the hospitality industry is high.  Get absolutely everything the venue commits to in writing.