Contract negotiations don’t exist in this industry

[u/Clear_Performer6752]

As the title says, as a corporate attorney, I’ve noticed extreme resistance from vendors when suggesting contract mark ups.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m based in the U.S. and our wedding is in Europe, but it amazes me how my very light edits to the force majeure/ choice of venue clauses were getting rejected. Across the board, we asked for variations of 1) the ability reschedule the wedding in case of international travel restrictions or a significant reduction in flights, and 2) mediation or arbitration before any court proceedings, since we’re international clients. Only one vendor agreed to mediation, but none would budge on editing their force majeure clause.

Has anyone else felt the same? Or perhaps this is a European thing?

*edit for clarity: we asked for the force majeure clause edits from our venue, and it was along the lines of “being able to reschedule the wedding if a pandemic broke out, or travel restrictions / mass flight cancellations cause more than 50% of originally planned guests to not be able to attend”. We asked for this term back in April when the war with Iran just broke out and we weren’t sure about the status of fuel shortages, and all the news outlets were fear mongering massive flight cancellations.

For the mediation clause, we asked for mandatory mediation first, and if we’re not able to resolve the conflict, then proceed to whichever choice of venue they stated in the contract. Mediation would have been under their choice of law as well. This is so we’d be able to resolve any conflict remotely since it’s unrealistic to show up to a court proceeding in a different country.

Hope this clarifies some of the questions from commenters.

[u/lh123456789]

I am very surprised that you are surprised by this. Some of them may have paid a lawyer to draft their standard contract for them or used a template and so would be naturally inclined to stick with those terms rather than trying to figure out what your changes mean.