An Irish couple awaiting their dream ceremony in Tenerife in September lost €26,000 when their wedding planner announced she was insolvent without having organised any of the event.
Bride-to-be Sorcha McManigan and her fiancé, Alan Kent, both 31, had been planning and arranging their perfect day for over two years and flew, on three occasions, to look at venues in the Canary Islands.
The couple contracted British wedding planner Claire Lopez, who runs the company Weddings in Tenerife, and had already paid more than two thirds of the €37,000 bill for their pending nuptials when they received a devastating email last Friday.
Ms McManigan said: ‘My heart just dropped and I had to break the news to Alan because he didn’t get the email. The fact, after all the money we had spent, she wouldn’t even ring us to tell us in person.
‘We’ve been in touch with four or five other Irish couples who she took money from. There are a lot of English couples too, some of whom are over in Tenerife right now and we still don’t actually know the extent of how many people’ this happened to.
An invoice from Weddings in Tenerife to Dubliner Ms McManigan shows an extensive list of un-itemised charges for a luxurious wedding on the south of the island with flowers, cake, an open bar, food, venue hire, a videographer, photographer, celebrant for the ceremony, and a planning fee for Ms Lopez.
The couple are now down tens of thousands of euro with next to nothing to show for it as their wedding date looms, leaving them distraught.
‘It’s like we have to pay for a second wedding with four months to go,’ Ms McManigan said.
Bride-to-be Sorcha McManigan and her fiancé, Alan Kent, both 31, had been planning and arranging their perfect day for over two years
‘We had given her €26,000 and she was pushing us for another €10,000 last week, right before we got this email saying the company was insolvent,’ Ms McManigan said. ‘Some couples we know who have lost money didn’t even get one [an email]at all and only found out through Facebook. There are people we’ve been in touch with, with weddings in two and three weeks and they have absolutely nothing organised.
‘We found out only on Monday that we have our venue secured for the date that she says, but she only paid €1,000 of the €5,000 venue cost and nothing to any of the other vendors. We are trying to rebuild, but it’s very difficult to find the cost of €30,000-plus in four months.’
Facebook posts about the fiasco show other couples scrambling to contact suppliers to see if services they paid for through Ms Lopez had been organised, while other planners and celebrants posted online to reassure clients they have no links to the firm.
Wedding planner Claire Lopez of Weddings in Tenerife
One couple who sent wedding items out to the company’s office for storage flew out to find the premises empty with windows covered up. They shared a photo of the scene with Ms McManigan.
‘She had a website, that’s gone all her social medias are wiped,’ she said.
‘All the affected couples are just in disbelief in WhatsApp groups together just to share information a little bit easier, especially from the legal side of things. I’ve been in touch with the Department of Foreign Affairs here. They’ve been absolutely super with helping me but, of course, it’s not like they can organise a wedding for me.’
The civil servant said police told two couples in Tenerife the issue is a civil matter, while no one involved can spare money to hire a solicitor after this.
Some are attempting to pool money together after being quoted thousands of euro to take the case. ‘I can’t cancel the wedding, everyone’s got flights booked and accommodation booked and I don’t want people to lose money on this seeing as they’re good enough to come to Tenerife in the first place,’ said Ms McManigan.
‘We’ve got people flying in from the US, France, Ireland and I don’t want them to be at a disadvantage, because of this.’
Spain’s business registry shows that Weddings in Tenerife was incorporated in February 2023 and Claire Lopez is not the planner’s legal name. Two directors are listed: Claire Louise Mary Oxenham and Lars Jensen, a Danish ex-biker who Ms McManigan says she was told was her wedding planner’s husband.
While couples who paid tens of thousands of euro had been told over email last week that the company would be filing for insolvency ‘as soon as our lawyer has prepared the necessary documents’, the business registry shows that as of yesterday the company was still active.
‘We feel really foolish, I feel like there were red flags I must have missed but you’re in so deep you don’t want to think something could potentially go wrong.’
The lack of communication has left Ms McManigan and Mr Kent ‘incredibly suspicious’ they were defrauded rather than the company having gone bust, she said.
‘For the last two years she hasn’t paid any vendors, so we have no food, no DJ, no furniture, where did that money go?’ she asked. ‘There are people with 2027 weddings who she took money from on Thursday before, on the Friday, saying the company was done.
‘We feel really foolish, I feel like there were red flags I must have missed but you’re in so deep you don’t want to think something could potentially go wrong.’
Ms McManigan said: ‘Alan is possibly flying out to Tenerife next week to meet with a new planner to get things back on track and to try and deal with any legal matters,’ she said. ‘Our wedding might look very different, but we’re going to definitely put on a party and make sure that people enjoy themselves.’
Claire Lopez was contacted for comment.