Errigal Country House Hotel Cavan

In December 2007 my fiancée and I put down a deposit of €1500 to secure the Errigal Country House for our wedding and reception, to be held in October 2008. We were informed at that time that the hotel was planning to add an extra reception area in the near future, but we were assured that this work would be finished by the time of our wedding. In April ‘08 we received a letter from the hotel informing us of the plans to extend the hotel which stated that the impact would be ‘minimal’. In June ‘08 we visited the hotel to find that an entire wing was in the process of being added to the front of the hotel and were dismayed to learn that the development would not be finished by the time of our wedding. Thus we would be entering the hotel on our wedding day in front of a building site. In addition, as a result of the extension the windows in the civil ceremony/reception area would be blocked up, resulting in a very dark and dingy room. We were obviously devastated about this and subsequently cancelled our booking and entered into correspondence with the manager in an attempt to reclaim our deposit. A detailed letter outlining our dissatisfaction merely resulted in a solicitor’s letter three weeks later which did not address any of our points. We replied to this letter twice but did not receive further response until our bank contacted the hotel’s solicitors on our behalf. The solicitors simply informed them that we had broken the contract by cancelling the booking and had therefore breached the contract.

As you can imagine, this caused us a great deal of mental stress. Not only did we have to locate another venue on the same day but we also had to rearrange all of the bookings.

The hotel itself seemed very nice and we were looking forward to having our wedding there. However, we appalled by the treatment we received and simply cannot recommend the Errigal Country House Hotel. I recommend to anyone wishing to hold an event at this hotel that you obtain a written and signed contract covering every detail of the event before handing over any money or you might find that your day was ruined as ours was.